“I’m a bit speechless,” Ian Fowler said outside the Old Bailey on Friday, April 4. “It made me cry. I couldn’t believe what he had done. It was absolutely sickening.”
Ian, from Basildon, had just left the sentencing hearing for the man behind what the prosecution called an “appalling” attack on his father, Bernard Fowler.
Bernard, 87, of Hamilton Drive, Harold Wood, was savagely beaten to death by schizophrenic Sekai Miles at Harold Wood train station in February 2024.
The court heard Miles gouged Bernard’s eyes before bludgeoning him to death with his own walking stick, then repeatedly stamping on his head.
The attack was completely unprovoked. Miles, 23, of Brent Cross Gardens in Hendon, was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.
“I can’t believe how barbaric it was,” said Ian.
“All I knew was a friend of mine, who works at the hospital, said ‘please don’t come to the hospital to see your dad’.
“I didn’t realise he had his eyes out. It was very nasty. It isn’t like they had a fight and someone died. It’s barbaric.”
Prosecutor Ben Aina KC gave a blow by blow description of the horrific attack, which was all captured on station CCTV.
“I’m glad they didn’t put the video on,” said Ian. “I didn’t really want to see that.”
The court heard that three months before the savage attack, a doctor had told Miles – who had been sectioned twice in the previous year – that in his opinion, he did not have schizophrenia.
A community mental health order which expired the following month was not renewed.
“I understand that there’s going to be an inquiry,” Ian said.
“The person that should be liable is the person that signed him off. That person who signed him off should be sacked. They should have made sure he had the right medication.”
He said killer Miles “kept staring me out” in court.
“It was like he was trying to bother me,” he said.
Asked whether he was happy with the indefinite hospital order, Ian said: “If it’s long enough, yes. It’s as much as they can do, isn’t it.”
