The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

A MAN accused of his daughter’s stabbing death has been declared by a psychiatrist “not fit” to plead to the murder charge against him.

The physician who evaluated 46-year-old Richard Gibson of Sunshine Park on July 9 and August 14, said the man was still hearing voices and hallucinating.

And while there was “marginal improvement” in the accused’s symptoms, the physician said Gibson was not fit to plead to the charge of murder as yet.

Gibson is accused of murdering his 15-year-old daughter, Richa Gibson. Last October, the teenager was stabbed to death at her home in Sunshine Park during an argument.

When the 46-year-old father appeared before Senior Justice Jon Isaacs in April to be arraigned in the Supreme Court, he told the court that he was suffering from a mental disability.

Justice Isaacs deferred the arraignment and ordered a psychiatric evaluation of the accused.

With Wednesday’s update regarding Gibson’s mental state, Senior Justice Isaacs ordered that the man continue the prescribed treatment that he had been receiving up to the hearing in hopes that he would have improved by October 22.

Notwithstanding Gibson’s mental illness, he was remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison because the judge felt the prison was a more secure facility in which to hold the accused.