A lawyer who used hypodermic needles to inject his blood into food at… Sainsbury’s, tesco and waitrose saves after hearing the voice of Boris Johnson was sent to a psychiatric hospital for assessment.
Leoaai Elghareeb, 37, walked into three shops on Fulham Palace Road, west London, on August 25 last year with a bucket full of hypodermic needles.
CCTV footage shows the lawyer poking at random products, including an apple, bacon, buttermilk and Chicken Tikka fillets.
Police were eventually called when officers received reports of a man throwing blood-filled syringes and eggs at the public.
This included a syringe thrown at a doctor, but luckily it bounced off her and caused no injuries.
The three supermarkets then had to throw away all their products as a precaution, resulting in a loss of almost £500,000.
It was agreed that Elghareeb had committed the offences, but his lawyer claimed that he was insane at the time of committing the offences.
He denied three counts of contaminating goods and two counts of assault and an Isleworth Crown Court jury formally found him not guilty of insanity in May.
Judge Alastair Hammerton ordered psychiatrist reports and postponed the sentence until today, before a final hearing on Sept. 30 later this year.
At today’s hearing, the judge said, “I have issued a preliminary hospital order and hopefully you [Elghareeb] will be submitted to St Bernard’s in the coming days.
Leoaai Elghareeb (pictured at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last year) injected food with his blood at a range of supermarkets in a £500,000 burst
Dramatic footage showed the moment the lawyer started poking at random food items in the Sainsbury’s store
Forensic investigators at a Little Waitrose store on Fulham Palace Road after Elghareeb .’s arrest
“Then there will be an assessment and the judge can better decide what the final order will be.”
Judge Hammerton noted that, in his opinion, Elghareeb’s mental health “presents a risk of serious harm.”
He added: ‘I note that he has not started with the full range of treatments, including psychological therapies.
“Assessing Mr. Elghareeb on the ward would give a much better idea of the response to treatment.”
CCTV footage played in court shows Elghareeb entering a Sainsbury’s store wearing distinctive Nike shorts and an American football-style t-shirt.
It shows him walking to the ready meals before then dramatically puncturing food with a syringe.
Elghareeb then moves on to the next section, keeping an eye on more products while holding in his mouth what resembles another syringe before injecting a second food item.
Prosecutor Diana Wilson told the court how he walked along Fulham Palace Road with his bucket of syringes filled with his blood.
She said: “On the way, he also threw a few syringes at people inside and outside the store, including hitting a passerby in the street.
“When confronted by a succession of store workers in the supermarkets for his actions, he attacked one of them by pushing him, in addition to making verbal insults to those around him.”
Elghareeb then punched guard Bilal Ansari in the chest while shouting, “You are all despicable people and Sainsbury’s is despicable.”
He did the same at Tesco, injecting food and throwing syringes, forcing staff to close the store immediately.
Shortly before he was arrested, Elghareeb also walked past a tapas bar called Avanti and threw a plant pot through the open door, narrowly missing a waiter.
Forensic police teams tried to identify the goods injected by Elghareeb, though a total of more than £500,000 worth of goods had to be dumped
At a hearing today, Judge Alastair Hammerton issued a preliminary mental health hospital order, noting that the attorney ‘presents a risk of serious harm’
During a thorough search and deep cleaning, the three supermarkets found a total of 21 syringes before they could open again.
Earlier, Dr Frank Farnham, a forensic psychiatrist, told the court that Elghareeb suffers from a “serious illness of the mind leading to loss of sense of reality.”
He said Elghareeb heard voices ordering him to do things by controlling his dreams and parts of his body.
dr. Farnham added: “These are often confronted with problems of schizophrenia.”
He claimed that one of these voices was Boris Johnson, while another would be a former colleague.
Elghareeb had previously worked at some of London’s most prestigious ‘Magic Circle’ law firms before he began abusing crystal meth as part of his ‘work hard and play hard lifestyle’.
dr. Farnham continued: ‘He is intelligent and has done very well academically. He has had a very successful career in the legal profession.’
Elghareeb, of Crabtree Lane, Fulham, denied three charges of goods contamination and two assaults before being found not guilty by reason of insanity.
He appeared in court today in a dark blue suit with long slicked back hair.
Elghareeb was remanded in custody before being sent to St Bernard’s Hospital in west London.
A final hearing on September 30 this year at Isleworth Crown Court will decide whether he should remain in hospital.