Woman killed man in racist attack after asking to be sent to hospital

A woman who stabbed a stranger to death in a racist and unprovoked attack had asked her care worker to have her sent back to hospital minutes before, a court heard.

Christina Howell, 37, who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, knifed Hubert ‘Isaac’ Brown, 61, in the neck while he was sitting on a wall in Bristol in September 2023.

Witnesses heard her yell racist abuse at him as he passed out, the court heard.

They proved to be the last words heard by Mr Brown, who was taken to hospital in a taxi but could not be saved.

Howell had been hospitalised 14 times over the previous 10 years, and was on antipsychotic medication at the time of the attack.

In a meeting moments before, she showed her care worker the four-inch knife she would go on to use against Mr Brown and said she was going to ‘get the Jamaican drug dealer’.

Mr Brown, who was not a Jamaican drug dealer, was described in court as well-liked character in his area of St Paul’s.

The care worker called police after the meeting – but by that time Howell had already attacked Mr Brown.

The court also heard how Howell posted a series of ‘bizarre and aggressive’ rants on Facebook in the 24 hours leading up to the attack.

She was said to have been excitable and sporadically talkative while in police custody, claiming to be the ‘Charles Bronson of Bristol’.

When charged with murder, she told officers: ‘I regret that I stabbed him, not that he died.’

Howell was eventually taken to court for manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.

She initially entered a not guilty plea but later revised this to guilty.

Judge Peter Blair KC, Recorder of Bristol, handed her a hospital order, with a restriction order which he warned could ‘last much longer’ than a prison sentence.

She was also indefinitely banned from entering the city of Bristol.

Judge Blair accepted Howell had ‘difficult’ struggles, but told her: ‘Let’s make no bones about it, the things you said at the time and afterwards make plain that that was a feature of your behaviour at that moment in time.

‘I’m faced with a very stark choice because for the facts that have been described to me you plainly are a danger and this is a case where, as I have already made comment in the submissions of the barristers, requires imprisonment for life.’

Mr Brown’s cousin, Dion Johnson, said he was more than another victim of racist violence, and criticised a ‘complete lack of remorse’ from Howell.

Speaking to the court, Ms Johnson said: ‘We have always wondered whether more could have been done to keep Isaac safe.

‘To know that those were some of the last words Isaac heard before he died causes us unbearable pain.

‘Isaac is more than another victim of racist violence, he deserves respect and his loss should not be in vain.’

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