'I'm sorry, I was dreaming'

How an 'understated and quiet' pupil at a £46,000-per-year private school in Devon went on hammer-wielding rampage

- ALEX ROSS

It was the middle of the night at the prestigious Blundell's School in Tiverton and all appeared calm as boarding children and staff slept in their beds. But at just before 1am, the quiet of the late spring night was shattered, and the future of three students was about to change forever.

It began when maths teacher Henry Roffe-Silvester was woken up by footsteps in a shared bedroom above his boarding house quarters, and went up to investigate. At the door to the dormitory, he was violently confronted by a hammer-welding student dressed only in his boxer shorts. Behind the attacker, blood was splattered across the walls and beds of the pitch-black room.

Inside, two students lay severely injured having been bludgeoned in their beds by the 16-year-old boy. On Friday, at Exeter Crown Court, following a trial, the boy, now aged 17, was found guilty of three counts of attempted murder after the jury heard how he set upon the two sleeping students and teacher.

The teenager, who will be sentenced in October, was allegedly on a mission to protect himself from a zombie apocalypse when he carried out the attack. “[He] struck me on the head with a hammer,” Mr Roffe-Silvester told the jury, as he described being attacked by the teenager and then stumbling backwards before being struck again, and then again.

Six devastating hammer blows were directed at his head by the student, before the teacher managed to grasp the weapon in the corridor outside. Walking back into the dormitory, the teacher then discovered in horror the two severely injured boys lying in their beds.