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A British mother is pleading for a reduced sentence for her ex-soldier son who killed the couple’s next-door neighbors because he believed “they were the enemy”.
Lynn Reeves says her son Collin Reeves, who fatally stabbed the couple as their children slept upstairs, committed the barbaric acts because of ‘Post-Traumatic Stress’ suffered during wars and military service, and because he was abandoned by the army that did not give him the proper psychological help.
Army officials meanwhile said that there has never been such a request from the ex-soldier or his family.
Reeves, 35, was jailed for life and a minimum of 38 years after being found guilty of the murders by Bristol Crown Court.
He had previously admitted the manslaughter of Jennifer and Stephen Chapple, in Somerset, south-west Britain, on November 21 last year, arguing reduced responsibility.
Reeves used a ceremonial army knife to kill him in the incident, which followed a long-running neighborhood dispute over the parking lot between his mother and the deceased couple.
The mother now claims that her son suffers from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and this caused him to “jump over the shared garden fence and enter their house to kill them”.
“We do not want to overlook the fact that Jennifer and Stephen Chapple lost their lives and their children were left without parents, for the suffering that their family and friends must experience,” Lynn said.
“This should not have happened. But it wasn’t Collin who did it, it wasn’t his character. He accepts that he should be punished for his actions, even though it was his mental state that forced him to do it, not the boy we know.”
Reeves is married and the father of a child originally from Wales, who fought at the British base Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq, where he witnessed many injuries and deaths of fellow soldiers or opposing militant forces.
He had started working as a truck driver and enjoyed physical and social activities.
But his mother blames the army and psychologists for not acting to help him even though Reeves had not sought help from any institution. The trial jury also believed that he did not know what he was doing when he killed his neighbors.
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