Vicar killer 'had stabbed teen'

The court heard Geraint Evans was obsessed with God and the devil

A teenager claims he was stabbed by a man a year before he killed a south Wales vicar.

Craig Phillips, now 18, from Maerdy, Rhondda, said he was attacked by Geraint Evans, who was detained in a secure psychiatric unit for the manslaughter of Father Paul Bennett.

Evans, 24, from Trecynon, near Aberdare, Cynon Valley was arrested over that incident but never charged.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said there was insufficient evidence.

Sentencing Evans on Tuesday, the judge at Cardiff Crown Court accused him of "inhuman savagery" in his killing of Father Bennett in the grounds of his church in Trecynon in March.

He pleading guilty to killing a the married-father of two on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

I felt a little push to the back and that was it, I woke up in hospital Craig Phillips

The court heard he was a paranoid schizophrenic obsessed with God and the devil and fixated with religion and knives. He had been bombarded websites with menacing messages.

Cardiff Crown Court also heard that Evans had never come to the attention of the psychiatric services.

Father Bennett's family have already called for an inquiry, saying someone should have realised he was dangerous.

Now Mr Phillips, 18, from Maerdy, said he was attacked by Evans a year before he killed the vicar.

He said he was stabbed after relieving himself against a house in Maerdy that he thought was derelict.

"I felt a little push to the back and that was it, I woke up in hospital," said Mr Phillips.

Father Paul Bennett was stabbed several times

"I nearly died. I had a punctured lung, and was sliced across the back of the neck."

Mr Phillips' mother Beverley Pike said she was told by police while waiting outside the hospital treatment room for her son that Evans had mental problems.

""As I was waiting I went and spoke to the police officer who went in the ambulance with Craig," she said.

"And that's what he told me that they had taken Geraint Evans to hospital because he was a registered schizophrenic and they obviously had to have a doctor's word to say that he was fit to be interviewed."

Neither Mr Phillips or another man, Kurt Preston, who witnessed the attack on Mr Phillips, could positively identify Evans as the man who stabbed him.

Mr Preston said he had to give a statement to police the next day and was told that Evans had had mental problems in the past.

South Wales Police said they could not comment further without knowing the identity of the police officers concerned.

The CPS said Mr Phillips case had been reinvestigated since the murder of Father Bennett and that had confirmed that the original inquiry was handled properly and that there was still insufficient evidence.