The 31-year-old man on trial for the murder of a primary school playground supervisor in Amsterdam was driven to commit the crime by voices, Amsterdam district court was told on Thursday.

Leo van Trappe was stabbed to death close to a school playground in the city’s smart Zuid district in March in what appeared to be a motiveless crime. A number of children witnessed the attack.
B, described by experts as psychotic and schizophrenic, told the court he had visited between 10 and 15 schools in the months before the murder. Voices in his head told him to stab someone, B told the court. He always had a knife in his rucksack but managed to stop himself killing in time.
But on March 24, B snapped and stabbed his 69-year-old victim once in the neck. He did not know Van Trappe, who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, the Volkskrant reported.
The paper says B, a one-time student at Delft University, had previous convictions for violence and was known to both the police and mental health services. He had spent some time in psychiatric hospital after stabbing a cyclist. But since October 2008, he had refused all medication.
The paper says B spent up to an hour shouting running up and down outside the Montessori primary school where the attack happened. No one called the police. He was spotted again outside the school the day after the murder and later arrested.