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A man who stabbed dead a French tourist in the Northern Territory has been found not guilty due to mental impairment but will be kept in Darwin prison indefinitely anyway.
Philippe Jegouzo, 33, and his wife Aurelie Chorier had been in Australia barely a week when an awful twist of fate brought them into contact with 35-year-old Pande Veleski.
The couple stopped in a rest area near Alice Springs to make coffee after driving from Darwin on November 30, 2016.
They were alone until a car pulled up and Veleski got out.
He approached Mr Jegouzo from behind and stabbed him in the neck more than 20 times in front of a horrified Ms Chorier and then drove away.
Mr Jeguozo died with an hour in the arms of strangers his distraught wife had flagged down.
Veleski, who had paranoid schizophrenia but stopped taking antipsychotic medication, left Melbourne five days earlier and had never met the French tourists before.
He almost gave two hitchhikers a lift the same day but they declined, thinking him strange.
He was suffering delusions and believed he had to “kill another person … to save the world” with his car radio telling him to do it at the rest stop, Veleski told psychiatrists.
He drove to an indigenous community near Ti Tree and turned up covered in blood but was turned away before being arrested naked by police the next morning.
Several members of Mr Jegouzo’s family, including twin sister Isabelle, sister Sylviane and her husband Patrice Chatry travelled from France to make emotional victim impact statements in the NT Supreme Court on Friday.
Chief Justice Michael Grant said the person most deeply affected was Ms Chorier, who had not worked since.
“She used to be a cheerful, vibrant, purposeful young woman but since this terrible tragedy being alive no longer holds any pleasure for her,” her parents in France said in a statement read in court.
“She has shut herself off from the outside world and no longer has any goals.”
Veleski was found not guilty of murder in a deal agreed to by prosecutors.
Psychiatrists for both parties agreed that due to his mental illness Veleski had been “unable to reason with a moderate degree of sense and composure about the wrongfulness of his actions”.
He has been in Darwin prison for nearly two years and will remain there after being sentenced to 20 years in custodial supervision.
© AAP 2018
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