Knife attacker stabbed Australia Post worker after ‘the satellites told me to’

The man found not guilty of murdering an Australia Post worker told his brother he stabbed the man because “the satellites told me to”, a court has heard.

A man found not guilty of murder over a violent random stabbing attack on a 56-year-old Australia Post worker said afterwards he did it because “the satellites told me to”.

After fleeing the park where the attack took place, he went home, washed his bloody knife, and stacked it in the drying rack.

Paranoid schizophrenic Brian Lee, 30, had been having psychotic delusions on the morning of January 13 last year when he drove to Hurstville and saw Klaus Petr in a park near the train station.

Mr Petr was eating breakfast and reading a book after returning from a night shift working for Australia Post at Rookwood.

CCTV video would capture the scenes of Lee’s fatal attack on Mr Petr, who staggered away from the park before dropping to the ground.

Lee, who was found not guilty of murder today by reason of mental illness, had begun having a paranoid episode about 1.30am, hearing familiar voices of imaginary characters.

According to agreed facts, Lee regularly heard voices of people he called Junie, Steph — a blonde policewoman, and Phuong — a long-haired Vietnamese gangster.

When his identical twin brother yelled at Lee who was speaking loudly in Cantonese inside their family home, Lee replied, “Sorry I am going to stab someone.”

When the brother heard Lee leave in his car, he phoned police and told them what had occurred.

Brian Lee, carrying the knife, and running from the scene after he stabbed Klaus Petr at Hurstville early on January 13, 2018.

CCTV shows Brian Lee walking along a road in Hurstville where he stabbed postal worker Klaus Petr with a knife.

The knife on the ground at the Lee home.

A shirt worn by Lee during the attack.

Lee parked the car and walked into a vacant block used as a park next to Hurstville train station and at 6.09am walked up to Klaus Petr and stabbed him, then ran away.

Mr Petr, a father of one, collapsed soon afterwards and was found by people practising tai chi in the park.

A post mortem later found he had stab wounds to the neck and chest with injuries to major veins including his internal jugular vein which led to extreme bleeding.

The attack was caught on CCTV near the park and captures Mr Petr suffering “a violent attack … before he falls to the ground”, Justice Peter Garling told the NSW Supreme Court.

Lee pleaded not guilty for mental health reasons in a brief judge-only trial today in which the Crown said he had known the stabbing was legally wrong, “but not morally wrong”.

Both the prosecution and the defence agreed on facts tendered in the case which detailed his mental illness through childhood to adulthood.

The knife Brian Lee used in the attack for which he has been found not guilty of murder by way of mental illness.

CCTV stills of Brian Lee carrying the knife superimposed on a police map of the locations where the attack took place and the aftermath.

The facts say Brian Lee returned home, washed the knife and placed it on the rack to dry and told his brother, “I stabbed someone”.

After the brother picked up the knife and called police to the house, Lee told them “I stabbed a guy. The satellites told me to do it.”

Born in Guangzhou, China in 1988 and emigrating aged three with his family to Australia in 1991, Lee told a teacher in Year Two he could hear the voices of “police talking”, the teacher told him the voices were “satellites”.
These auditory delusions continued into adulthood and the tendered facts said he smoked cannabis from the age of 13 or 14 until the age of 20 and also took ice in his later teen years.

Diagnosed as schizophrenic in 2008, he crashed his car into a pole the same year and was “found laughing at the scene of the crash”.

Police photograph of black tracksuit pants worn by Lee during the random stabbing attack on the 56-year-old Australia Post worker.

Klaus Petr was stabbed to death outside Hurstville train station.

Lee was thereafter treated as various hospitals and mental health units and placed on medication.

Asked by a psychiatrist after the Hurstville stabbing about the “satellites”, Lee said, “I hear them all the time”.

Dr Richard Furst concluded Lee believed he “was justified in stabbing the victim who was a stranger” after he was “instructed to by Phuong”, the imaginary gangster character.

Justice Garling found Lee not guilty by reason of mental illness and ordered that he be detained in the Metropolitan Remand and Reception prison in Silverwater correctional centre in western Sydney until the Mental Health Review Tribunal decides “it is safe to let you go”.

Lee’s barrister Nathan Steel said that his actions in “tragically killing this victim who was a stranger to him” had been brought on by psychotic delusions.

“There’s no dispute that Mr Lee committed the acts that caused the death of Klaus Petr,” he said.

It was believed at the time that Mr Petr may have been reading the Bible while he sat eating in the park before the attack occurred.

Klaus Petr’s wife Ann said her husband of 25 years had been a quiet man.

His wife Ann Petr told Channel 7 after last year’s attack she was finding it difficult to come to terms with the death of her husband of 25 years.

“Very hard. I never think (anything) like this (could) happen to him,” Mrs Petr told Seven.

“I just feel shocked. I don’t know, I just feel shocked.”

She said her husband was honest and hardworking and a good father to their son.

“He very good person, he very quiet,” Mrs Petr said.

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