MANCHESTER, NH – The day Akwasi Owusu stabbed three Manchester police officers, he thought they were CIA agents coming to torture and kill him, a forensic psychologist testified Tuesday.
Dr. Shannon Bader, former chief forensic examiner of the New Hampshire Office of the Forensic Examiner, diagnosed Owusu, 21, of 6 Ahern St., as suffering from schizophrenia on Feb. 4, 2020, when he stabbed officers Brendan Langston, Olivia LaCroix and Kevin Shields.
Last week, a jury convicted Owusu of one count of attempted murder and two counts of first-degree assault.
Judge David Anderson will determine if Owusu was insane at the time of the incident following a bench trial that began Tuesday in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District. The burden of proof is on the defense who must show by clear and convincing evidence that Owusu was insane at the time of the stabbing.
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 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.
In July 2021, after receiving treatment at the New Hampshire State Hospital, Owusu was restored to competency. When she evaluated him then, 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. She 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.”
Bader interviewed Owusu three times and reviewed all reports from the state hospital and police, including viewing the officer’s recording of the event with their body-worn cameras.
Asked if officers had identified themselves as Manchester police, Bader said they did. “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 said 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 it took time to determine a medical diagnosis but ultimately at the state hospital he was prescribed a newer anti-psychotic drug. Owusu responded well to the medication. Bader said those who are younger when diagnosed respond more quickly to treatment.
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 exaggerating 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.
Owusu had smoked marijuana the day before the incident. Asked if that could account for his mental state, she said the effect of marijuana is short – hours not days.
“Even if he smoked the day before, it would not have lasted into the next day,” she said.
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.
On Feb. 4, 2020, an argument broke out because Owusu had taken the TV from the living room and put it in his bedroom. Other family members and the police were called. 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 stabbed the officers.
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.
Raiche, after referring her to Drukteinis’ evaluation report, asked her if it wasn’t true that Owusu viewed the body-worn camera footage, said it didn’t show the stabbing and then denied he did the stabbing.
“That would be common,” she said of someone accused of a crime.
Patricia Nyantakyi, Owusu’s sister, in a break during the proceeding, said the situation with her brother has been really hard.
“We actually didn’t know what to do,” said Nyantakyi, who called police that February. “We didn’t know what was wrong with him.”
Since he was committed to the state hospital, has undergone treatment and continued under the care of the Manchester mental health center, Nyantakyi said her brother is the way he was before.
“He has been calm, no incident in the house. Nothing,” she said. “He’s been calm the way he used to be.”
Owusu is now back in the Valley Street jail, pending the outcome of the bench trial.
