A man who killed a vagrant with an ax and ate his brain and eyes has been committed to a maximum-security psychiatric hospital in the US after being found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Tyree Lincoln Smith, 36, was ordered committed yesterday.
Smith apologised for killing Angel Gonzalez, whose mutilated body was found in a vacant apartment in Connecticut in January 2012, a month after he was hacked to death.
"I'm really sorry for what I did, that I couldn't be myself," Smith said. "It really had nothing to do with the other person."
His cousin, Nicole Rabb, has testified that she saw Smith in December 2011 carrying a bloody ax and chopsticks and wearing pants that appeared to have blood on them. She said Smith told her he killed a man with the ax, ate his brain and eyeballs and drank sake in a local cemetery.
A psychiatrist testified that Smith heard voices that told him to eat Gonzalez's brain to better understand human behavior and eat his eyes to gain vision into the "spiritual realm."
A prosecutor and social worker urged the three-judge panel to protect society from him.
