Tenerife attack trial begins

The trial of Bulgarian Deyan Valentinov Deyanov, 29, began Monday in Tenerife, where Jennifer Mills-Westley was killed and decapitated in a brutal attack at a supermarket in May 2011.

The homeless drug addict has been accused of murdering the British grandmother inside a Chinese-run general store in the popular resort of Los Cristianos.

Mrs Mills-Westley, a retired road safety officer originally from Norwich, had a holiday home there and was shopping when the accused approached her attacked her. He repeatedly stabbed her with a knife in her back and neck until she was completely decapitated.

One witness who heard the screams said he went to the scene where he saw the accused with a knife and he was holding a woman’s head by the hair. Another described how he saw Deyanov run out of the store covered in blood and then running along the street holding the head before dropping it in the street. He was detained by the second witness who hit the Bulgarian with his crash helmet.

The accused answerd question through an interpreter and  admitted to being a habitual drug user before claiming that he is haunted by voices which tell him how to act.

The Prosecution have asked for 20 years imprisonment in a secure psychiatric unit for Deyanov, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who had been living homeless in the resort for some months before the crime.

 The defence claimes the accused had “committed no crime and certainly not the crime of murder” adding “he is a very sick man, he is a man who needed help and who didn’t get help. He was living on the streets with mental problems.”

The trial continues.