A tearful mother told a court how her “wild, sparkling-eyed” daughter wielded an imaginary sword against an invisible foe at her Arbroath flat, minutes before she discovered the living-room curtain alight in an incident that would become a “fierce” blaze.
Speaking through an interpreter, 59-year-old Latvian grandmother Anna Lacis sobbed as she spoke of events involving her daughter, Rada, in the time leading up to the fire at the house in Arbroath’s Warddykes Avenue last June, for which the 32-year-old now faces an indictment alleging wilful fireraising, endangering her mum and neighbour.
Lace, described as a prisoner at Cornton Vale, has denied the libel and the harrowing account of her state of mental health at that time emerged during a hearing into the admissibility of evidence in the case following a legal challenge by the panel’s solicitor, Brian Bell.
Mr Bell is asking the court to set aside statements taken under caution from Lace following her arrest, the day after her mum and brother picked her up from Perth where she had been found soaking wet and wandering in her nightclothes having been under psychiatric hospital care there.
In evidence at Forfar Sheriff Court on Wednesday, Mrs Lacis said her daughter had been very difficult on the journey home to Arbroath, shouting “unspeakable” things and trying to kick the car window before eventually curling into a foetal position in the back seat.
She then ran out of the Arbroath house around 3am, returning with two policemen six hours later, having been found on a road near Carnoustie.
Her mother then recalled events before the fire incident, saying her daughter had been fighting with someone, although there was no one else in the house.
“With both hands she was holding something, as if it was a sword,” said her mother.
“She had wild, sparkling eyes it was non-human. It was for at least half an hour but it seemed like forever.
“I couldn’t help her, I decided to leave,” she said, adding that she went upstairs and when she came back she saw the curtain was on fire and “burning very fast”.
Consultant forensic psychiatrist William Black told the court that if Lace had been as unwell as she seemed when he examined her some time after the alleged offence, she may have heard the police caution following her arrest but it would have been “quite unlikely” she would have understood it.
The court previously heard from a consultant psychiatrist who examined the accused on the day of the fire, who said he found no evidence of mental disorder and advised she could be dealt with by police after he recommended she should not be detained in hospital.
Sheriff Gregor Murray is expected to issue a judgment on the submissions later today following consideration of the “complex” matter.