FLASH
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An illegal immigrant, who had been released on bail from a detention center, is suspected of killing two people during a car crash.
The case concerns Albanian Emiljano Kasaj. He is suspected of deliberately running over pedestrian Leo Moran and cyclist Joel Carriedo with his Mercedes. The incident took place in Coventry in September 2023.
Warwick Crown Court was told by the Home Office that “nothing had been done” as he repeatedly breached his bail conditions.
Kasaj pleaded guilty in March this year to one count of attempted murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, The Telegraph reports.
The hearing held on Monday featured graphic footage from security cameras of 44-year-old Moran, who was hit on Gosford Road, while another bystander crashed into a building and suffered a head wound.
Other footage, presented to the court by prosecutor Peter Grieves-Smith, showed the car speeding away with a broken window and later driving towards hospital worker Carriedo, a father of two.
The NHS worker, whose bike was split in two by the crash, died from chest injuries after being hit head-on and thrown upside down by a wall in Woodway Lane, Coventry.
Looking at the facts of the case against Kasaj, who has no fixed address, Grieves-Smith told High Court judge Justice Choudhury that Kasaj then hit a house about 300 metres away and was arrested almost an hour later in a nearby garden.
The court heard that Kasaj had used a false name and address to register the vehicle.
Grieves-Smith told the court that psychiatrists had diagnosed the defendant with a paranoid psychosis related to schizophrenia, with which he told experts he believed he had to kill because he was being blackmailed.
The prosecutor said of the defendant: “Born in July 1990, he is an Albanian national with no previous convictions or warnings. He told the psychiatrist that, after leaving school, he had worked in a car wash and then travelled to Athens to find work. He had come to the UK around two years before the offences were committed and had settled in Coventry.”
The court heard that Kasaj also said he “came to England for a better life” and was “in the UK illegally”, but did not claim benefits.
Grieves-Smith told the court: "The police made enquiries regarding his status. Checks with the Albanian authorities indicate that he left Albania in January 2022.
"He was arrested for immigration offences in August 2022 after making no attempt to register and was detained with the intention of leaving. He said he was trafficked into the country in the back of a truck."
The court heard that Kasaj was held at Harmondsworth Detention Centre in west London and visited a hospital during that period, although the visit was not related to his mental health.
On 7 October 2022, the court heard, Kasaj was released on bail to an address in Newfield Road, Coventry, with a "compulsion to report" to the Solihull Immigration Centre on 5 December.
The prosecutor said that Kasaj never showed up at the immigration center, violating his parole.
"So, at the time he committed these criminal offences, he was subject to release conditions imposed due to his immigration status. He violated them, but the Ministry of the Interior did nothing about it," the Prosecutor said.
Psychiatric evidence presented in court showed that Kasaj suffers from “a serious mental illness, the most likely diagnosis being schizophrenia,” which may have been exacerbated by cannabis or cocaine use in the weeks before the incident.
Kasaj, who appeared in the dock along with a translator and several mental health nurses, is expected to be informed of the sentence.
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