Family loses mum and son after 'catastrophic diagnosis' and say medics 'took no notice of red flags'

A family who lost a mum and her son after a ‘catastrophic diagnosis’ say medics ‘took no notice of the red flags’.

Alan Williams stabbed his mother Lorraine Cullen to death in her own home on Radway Road in Huyton while under the belief that she was planning to kill his little sister. This "delusion" came as a result of his undetected and untreated paranoid schizophrenia, which had previously been misdiagnosed as autism.

His family say that medical professionals "took no notice of the red flags", with the then 21-year-old having displayed an array of concerning behaviour in the months before the fatal assault. Williams' older sister told a court: "They have taken my brother and my mum away from me and torn my family apart,” the Liverpool Echo reports.

READ MORE: Mystery of man found with 'life-threatening' injuries in Greater Manchester town centre

Liverpool Crown Court heard this week that Williams had moved into his own flat in January 2022, having previously lived with his grandparents. On the evening of May 10 that year, he had been due to spend the night at his mum's address.

But Richard Pratt KC, prosecuting, described how he instead left the property with his eight-year-old sister shortly before midnight and returned to his own apartment. Shortly after 8.15am the following day, he texted his grandad Michael Dalzell to inform him that his younger sibling was still with him.

Then, in a phone call with his grandma Angela Dalzell, Williams confessed that he had "killed his mother by hitting her on the head" and said that she was "in a better place". Mr Dalzell drove to his daughter's house as a result and found her lying face down in a pool of blood in the living room and covered by a quilt.

She was said to have