London: A man from Britain jailed for trying to assassinate Donald Trump has revealed how he lunged for a police office’s gun after voices in his head yelled: “Kill him!”
Michael Sandford, 21, was thrown out of a political rally in Las Vegas while suffering a psychotic episode.
According to The Sun, he is now back home with his family in Dorking, Surrey, after being released last week.
Mum Lynne was ineffective to hold him traveling to the US despite his struggles with mental illness, and wants the law changed.
Michael got within six meters of Trump at a Las Vegas rally but was suppressed when he attempted to grab a police officer’s gun.
Michael said: “I was hearing voices telling me to kill Donald Trump.”
“They’d been coming on for a while and getting stronger and more frequent. At one point they were screaming at me.
“My friends had said Trump needed to be stopped. They said he was going to destroy the country — but it was the voices in my head which were telling me to kill him.
“Then one day I saw he was speaking in Las Vegas and I decided to drive there and do something myself.”
Left home in Dorking, Surrey, a year earlier, Michael flown to the US to reunite with his American girlfriend Lauren, whom he met in Britain.
Michael’s worried mom Lynne was clueless to stop him although his mental health history, which included a spell sectioned under the Mental Health Act as well as anxiety, depression, and anorexia.
Lynne, now campaigning for new laws to help the parents of mentally ill children protect them from themselves, said: “We tried valiantly to stop him going. We spoke to mental health services and police, who shared our concerns but we couldn’t do anything.”
Under the Mental Capacity Act, those aged 16 and over have the right to make their own decisions and must be assumed to have the ability to do so unless it is established otherwise.