A sheriff has imposed a three-month interim compulsion order to allow further treatment of a mentally ill Angus woman who set fire to a flat with her mother inside.
Rada Lace had been found wandering the main dual carriageway between Dundee and Arbroath last June in only her nightwear and was taken to Stracathro Hospital in a “catatonic state”, but was not kept there.
She was taken back home to Arbroath by police and left in the care of her mother, Anna Lacis, who previously gave harrowing evidence to Forfar Sheriff Court about her daughter’s state of mind in the days and hours leading up to the wilful fireraising incident.
Latvian Ms Lacis had been in tears as she told the court of the “unspeakable things” her daughter had been shouting during a car journey in the early hours.
Her daughter had then been waving around an imaginary sword and Ms Lacis described her as being in a “non-human” state, with “wild sparkling eyes”.
She left the living room of the flat in Arbroath’s Warddykes Road but then came back in to find the curtains ablaze.
Ms Lacis suffered facial burns trying to pull the curtains down but managed to escape the blazing property, along with other residents of the block
Her daughter was standing close by in what was described as a catatonic state.
She was later taken back to Stracathro and doctors were of the opinion her mental health hadn’t changed and there was disorder requiring her to be sectioned.
Lace, a prisoner at HMP Cornton Vale, appeared again before Sheriff Gregor Murray at Forfar where sentence was further deferred until July 6 to allow reports to be prepared under the interim compulsion order.
“That will allow you to be assessed properly in terms of a long-term outcome from a mental health perspective,” added the sheriff.
