Cy Walsh, the son of former Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh, will be detained in a secure psychiatric facility until further order after being found not guilty earlier in the year of murdering his father due to mental incompetence.
Walsh, 28, has been held in James Nash House since his arrest in July 2015 after repeatedly stabbing his father to death at the family’s Somerton Park home in Adelaide’s beachside western suburbs.
Phil Walsh, 55, was the head coach of the Adelaide Football Club at the time.
The South Australian Supreme Court previously found the objective elements, or facts, of the offence proved but found that Cy Walsh’s psychotic state meant he was not criminally responsible for his actions.
He had pleaded not guilty to murder by reason of mental incompetence.
Walsh will be under a lifetime psychiatric supervision licence and Justice Anne Bampton has now set the terms of that licence, ordering he remain detained.
Under South Australian law if in the future his treating psychiatrists believe he has reached a point in his treatment when he is ready to begin transitional release into the community the case will have to come back before the Supreme Court for an application to vary that licence.
Cy suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia
In her previous findings, Justice Bampton said she accepted the opinions of forensic psychologists that at the time Walsh stabbed his father, he suffered from undiagnosed and untreated schizophrenia.
The court has now received a further psychiatric report about Walsh’s diagnosis and treatment plan as well as a victim and next of kin report.
Prosecutor Lucy Boord said given the opinions expressed in the psychiatric report it was appropriate for the court to order Walsh’s ongoing detention.
Justice Bampton agreed, and made the order.
In a victim impact statement read to the court on behalf of Phil Walsh’s wife, Meredith, in September she said her heart was broken.
“Our daughter is devastated by the loss of her father,” it read.
“Our son Cy is also shattered by what has happened, and has to live with the consequences of his illness, an illness that has destroyed our loving family.”
This post originally appeared on ABC News.