Grandmother killed outside home

A GRANDMOTHER was stabbed to death just feet from her front door by a family friend.

Margaret Burke, 60, was trying to calm 35-year-old Walter Weir when he pulled out a butterfly knife and stabbed her 16 times, the High Court in Glasgow heard yesterday.

Weir, from Blantyre, admitted killing Mrs Burke, a mother of five, grandmother and great-grandmother, in Parkville Drive, Blantyre, on 22 July last year. He was originally charged with murder, but the Crown accepted his plea to a reduced charge of culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Andrew Miller, prosecuting, said in the days before the killing, Weir had been hearing voices and believed everyone in Blantyre was out to get him.

Lord Brailsford sent Weir to the State Hospital on an interim compulsion order and deferred sentence on him until April.