MANCHESTER, NH – Akwasi Owusu, convicted last week of stabbing three city police officers more than three years ago, is not guilty by reason of insanity, a Superior Court judge ruled after a bench trial.
Judge David Anderson, presiding in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District, issued the ruling on Tuesday after a lengthy hearing concerning Owusu’s sanity on Feb. 4, 2020, the day he stabbed the officers inside his 6 Ahern St. home.
Anderson set a committal hearing for 2 p.m. on June 14. The Office of the Forensic Examiner is to conduct an evaluation of Owusu, 21, prior to that hearing.
The June 14 hearing is to determine if Owusu is a danger to the community. If Anderson says he is not, Owusu will be released. If he says he is, then Owusu will likely be detained and undergo psychiatric treatment.
During the three years it took for the case to go to trial, Owusu was committed for a period of time at the New Hampshire State Hospital. In October 2021, experts for both the defense and prosecution said he was competent to stand trial.
Last week, a jury found him guilty of attempted murder and two counts of first-degree assault. Prior to that verdict, Owusu had been back home for about a year, under the care of the Greater Manchester Mental Health Center. After a jury convicted him of one count of attempted murder and two charges of first-degree assault, he was returned to the Valley Street jail after
Once Anderson made his decision, Owusu was transferred to the Secure Psychiatric Unit located at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord.
The judge’s decision came after a bench trial on Tuesday to determine if Owusu was insane the day of the stabbings. He stabbed officers Brendan Langton, Olivia LaCroix and Kevin Shields on Feb. 4, 2020, in an incident at his home.
Langton was the most seriously injured after being stabbed in the side, partially collapsing a lung. LaCroix also was stabbed in the side, while Shields suffered a slash wound on his forehead.
Police went to his home after his sister called 911. An argument broke out among family members because Owusu had taken the TV from the living room and put it in his bedroom. The sister called a brother and then police.
Owusu got into a fistfight with one of his brothers who arrived at the residence. Police arrived, went inside the residence and up the stairs to Owusu’s bedroom where a stun gun was fired and Owusu leaped up and stabbed the officers.
Dr. Shannon Bader, former chief forensic examiner at the New Hampshire Office of the Forensic Examiner, diagnosed Owusu as suffering from schizophrenia. She testified he thought Manchester police officers were CIA agents coming to torture and kill him.
Bader, under questioning by Public Defender Brian Civale, said when she first evaluated Owusu for competency in March 2020, Owusu was in the Valley Street jail still untreated. She said he was quiet, didn’t reveal much, had no facial expression, was unconcerned about what was going on and was not with it. She was concerned that something was not quite right but said she did not have enough information to make a determination of his competency.
He was committed to the state hospital and Bader said he now receives a monthly injection of a new anti-psychotic medication.
When she evaluated him in July 2021, she said, he was more engaged and pleasant. In October 2021, when she was determining his sanity, he was still on medication and under the care of the Greater Manchester Mental Health Center.
Bader said Owusu at that time was able to highlight what happened to him. At the time of the stabbing, he thought he was a god and his father was Father Time. “It was almost a textbook case of schizophrenia,” she said.
Where, earlier at the state hospital, he denied he ever had a mental health issue or delusions, he told Bader he had had hallucinations, thought he was a god, heard voices and background chatter.
“He thought the CIA was coming for him and he was going to be kidnapped,” Bader said. “He believed family members were CIA, that CIA agents had now arrived and they were going to take him away and kill him. It was a delusion. It was irrational.”
She said officers did identify themselves as Manchester police. “It wouldn’t have mattered what they said,” she testified. “In his head, he believed they were CIA. He believed he was in danger. He thinks they’re CIA and they’re going to torture him.”
Bader explained schizophrenia typically manifests itself in young males between the ages of 17 and 24 and in women in their late 20s or early 30s. Owusu was 18 at the time of the incident.
She said since receiving treatment, she said there is no record of Owusu being violent.
Civale questioned her about what a malingerer does. She said people who fake mental illness will say they saw things that aren’t really a hallucination, such as they saw a dragon, or exaggerate things.
She said she never had a question about Owusu being a malingerer. Bader said he was seen by two psychiatrists and three psychologists and none thought he was a malingerer.
Assistant County Attorney Jonathan Raiche, in cross-examining Bader, hinted that Owusu might have been coached by his attorneys or, through the competency and insanity evaluation process, picked up on cues on how to fake it.
“In my professional opinion, this is not a coached testimony,” Bader said. In March of 2020, she said, “He wouldn’t have been receptive to coaching.”
She said Owusu said very little at that evaluation while she said malingerers over-embellish and “lay it on thick.”
Raiche also suggested that Owusu’s actions that day could be explained by his being an obstinate teenager. He outlined Owusu’s background and what happened the day of the stabbings.
Owusu, he said, came to the U.S. with his mother from Ghana when he was 2-years-old.
At the time of the stabbings, he had just graduated from high school, wasn’t working, was a “mama’s boy” whose mother had gone back to Africa and he was living with two sisters who came to the U.S. in 2014, after him.
Days before the stabbings, he had an argument with one of his sisters concerning his use of her car without her permission. The argument led to him allegedly choking her and another sister pulled him off her.
He was found competent by both Bader and Dr. Albert Drukteinis, a psychiatrist and the state’s expert, in mid-2021. She said there was no disagreement among the evaluations in Oct. 2021, when she diagnosed him as being a schizophrenic. She said the state had the option to have another evaluation done of Owusu.
