A knifeman who stabbed two complete strangers while they were waiting for a bus has been detained in a mental health hospital. 

Firomsa Ali, 20, launched an unprovoked attack on a 56-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman on Orpington High Street in August 2021. 

On Tuesday (September 19, 2023) Ali was given a hospital order after a judge at Croydon Crown Court was told that he was probably suffering with schizophrenia. 

Prosecutor Mike Hollis said Ali had shown a pattern of increasingly violent and erratic behaviour in the year leading up to the attack. 

Then at around 2am on August 7, 2021, he launched an unprovoked attack on a man and woman who were waiting at a bus stop. 

Ali stabbed both victims in the stomach while the woman also received serious wounds to her legs. 

Both victims still have enduring pain and complications from their wounds two years on. 

The man said: “I still suffer pain and find it hard to sleep at night without taking strong painkillers.” 

He added that his career has been put on hold and that he’s suffered financially because of this. 

The female victim said she’s had to leave her restaurant job because it would require her to travel home late at night. 

She said: “Even now I find it difficult to be out alone. If I see a man walking towards me with his hands in his pocket I’m terrified.” 

She also said the length of time it has taken for this matter to be resolved in court has limited her ability to move on. 

Ali was deemed not fit to plead to charges of unlawfully and maliciously wounding. 

The court previously heard that Ali showed psychotic symptoms which may have been a result of cannabis dependency or due to tuberculosis. 

But Dr Sanjib Ghosh said that Ali had been hearing voices and that his symptoms were continuing even now that he isn’t using cannabis. 

Ali came to the country as an asylum seeker in 2019 and the court heard he showed symptoms of PTSD. 

“It’s most likely to be schizophrenia. I would say we’re talking over a 90 per cent chance really,” Dr Ghosh said. 

Judge Samantha Presland sentenced Ali to a Section 37 hospital order with an additional Section 41 restriction order. 

This means that even when Ali is deemed to have been treated, the Secretary of State will have to sign off his release from hospital. 

“I’ve seen the CCTV footage of it and it must have been an absolutely terrifying situation to be in,” Judge Presland said. 

She added: “I’m sorry it’s taken a year for us to get this far with it. I apologise to the victims as well, and I know that they may or may not feel that justice has been but he is clearly a very sick man.”