Dr. Noelia de Mingo, 51, who in 2003 killed three people in the hospital where she worked in Madrid, has reached an agreement on Monday to enter a psychiatric prison for stabbing two women in a supermarket a few meters from her home in El Molar (Madrid) in 2021. The Prosecutor's Office and the prosecution have agreed with her defense that the doctor will remain in a psychiatric center for 33 years and has been given a complete exemption for mental anomaly. In 2006, the defendant was sentenced to be committed to a penal psychiatric facility for up to 25 years, of which she served only 10 years. In 2017, favourable reports from this centre, which ensured that he was no longer a danger to society and that his psychotic disorder was controlled, allowed him to be released into family care. Five years later, in October 2021, he assaulted two women just a few blocks from their home with a knife. One was seriously injured and the other suffered more minor injuries.
The parties have reached this agreement because the defendant has assumed two crimes of attempted murder and another of attack against authority, for attacking the officers who arrested her. The defendant was present at the reading of the agreement, but spoke only to show her agreement with the agreement, remained handcuffed at all times and waived her right to the last word. The hearing lasted just five minutes, during which the judgment was read, which is final, since all the parties have waived their right to appeal. The victims have also attended the Court, but they have not intervened at the hearing or made statements, but they have hugged each other when they learned of the agreement in the corridors of the building. "We have reached the maximum in terms of admission to a penitentiary psychiatric center, which was the main objective. It has not been an easy agreement, there were many fringes, for us it was important that it was a qualification of attempted murder," said the lawyer of one of the victims, Carlos Sardinero, who added that they will do "everything possible" to ensure that the measure is fully complied with.
The ruling also sentences the defendant to pay €110,000 to the victim who was most seriously injured and €50,000 to the one who suffered more minor injuries. The sentence also prohibits the defendant from returning to El Molar and approaching her victims for the next five years. De Mingo had arrived at the Provincial Court of Madrid guarded by the Civil Guard from the prison of Estremera, to which she had been transferred from the psychiatric prison of Foncalent (Alicante) on the occasion of this oral hearing.
De Mingo's case is one of those sparking debate on how to address the problem of mentally ill prisoners, especially in overcrowded facilities with a shortage of professionals. On April 3, 2003, he went to his place of work, the Jiménez Díaz Foundation, the former clinic in La Concepción, with a knife. There she went up to the rheumatology unit, where she was in her third year of the MIR. That day he began attacking everyone he came across. The first fatality was his colleague Leila El Ouamari, a 27-year-old resident doctor.
He then assaulted 77-year-old Jacinta Gómez de la Llave, who died almost instantly. He continued to assault everyone who crossed his path. One of them was Félix Vallés Arroyo, the husband of a patient, who died six days later. Five other people were injured in their assaults. According to the sentence that convicted her, she acted under the effects of a psychotic break as a result of the paranoid schizophrenia of which she is diagnosed. The doctor alleged that she had long felt "spied on."
The arrest of Noelia de Mingo by the Local Police.
You can see how he carries the knife and the police reduce it with the extendable one. pic.twitter.com/sg6JVf5lsl
— RO-1 (@Undercover_Camo) September 20, 2021
In 2006, she was sentenced to 25 years in a psychiatric detention center, although she was given the full exemption of mental insanity. The court ruling considered that, although he was not aware of his actions, he was a danger to society, so it forced him to follow specific treatment in the penitentiary.
In 2017, the reports of all the professionals who had treated her in that decade confirmed the stability of the prisoner's illness and the judge replaced the inpatient treatment with an outpatient treatment. The professionals assured that she had ceased to be a problem for her environment and for herself. The family assured that they would make sure that he complied with the taking of the medication and the control of his doctor.
This was the case for the next five years in which De Mingo lived in a house in the heart of El Molar with his nonagenarian mother. There she led a discreet and almost isolated life, according to neighbors who, from time to time, coincided with her walking with her family or at mass. Until September 20, 2021, when he left his house with a knife in his hand and entered a supermarket just a couple of blocks from his home. He attacked the cashier, who was badly injured, and the owner of the establishment, who managed to escape and take refuge in a nearby pharmacy.
Carlos Sardinero, lawyer for one of the two private accusations, upon his arrival. ZIPI ARAGON (EFE)
After the attack, De Mingo remained in the street for a few minutes brandishing the knife and threatening other bystanders. A few seconds later, a municipal police patrol arrived, which he also tried to attack with the knife. The agents managed to reduce her and since then she has been admitted to the psychiatric centre of Foncalent (Alicante).
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