A mother who stabbed her two sons beside a major highway late at night has requested she be released from custody once a week to go shopping.
Supreme Court Justice Sandi McDonald found Megan Jayne Somerville, 37, not guilty of attempting to murder her children in 2022 by way of mental incompetence.
Justice McDonald found that while Somerville had carried out the violent attack on Adelaide’s North-South Motorway, she did not know it was wrong at the time.
During the decision in March this year, the judge said her ‘mental impairment at the time of the conduct… was substantially caused by self-induced intoxication’.
Somerville, who has been residing in the mental health facility James Nash House, fronted the South Supreme Court on Wednesday via video link.
Her lawyer submitted a request on Somerville’s behalf to release her into the community for weekly shopping trips, The Advertiser reported.
Through the lawyer, Somerville apologised to her two young sons, saying she did not deserve forgiveness but hoped she would have it one day.
‘Nothing I can say that can change anything. I am so sorry. I don’t deserve to be forgiven,’ she said.
Police were called to the North-South Motorway at 11.30pm on August 15, 2022 after reports a woman was being held by a member of the public.
The court previously heard Somerville had stopped her Honda sedan and took her sons, aged three and eight at the time, out of the car.
She then stabbed them ‘a number of times’ with a knife.
The court also heard Somerville had used methamphetamine, cannabis and prescription medication that night.
A forensic psychiatrist said the mother-of-two’s account of what happened included a fear that she and her boys were in great danger.
‘She had such severe delusions that were of a certain nature that meant she thought her children were in danger of a fate worse than death, that they were being groomed to kill her, and when that was done, they would be abducted, tortured and killed,’ the psychiatrist said.
‘In harming the children, she thought she was doing the right thing in the circumstances.’
During the hearing this week, Somerville wept as the father of her now six-year-old son described the little boy’s emotional state in a moving victim impact statement.
‘He has been horrifically affected from this incident. He is incredibly clever so he remembers a lot. He often talks about violence,’ he said.
‘He is either petrified of knives and blood, or, when playing with other kids, he talks to me about wanting to use a knife when he disagrees with them.
‘We can only hope that the accurate punishment is given for such heinous, evil acts.’