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Support worker stabbed by a resident in mental health crisis

Staff spent the day trying to get psychiatric help for a deteriorating resident and were sent back to a GP referral. She walked into the staff hub and stabbed three carers.

Care and support · 2020s

What happened

On 7 March 2023, Michele Rutherford, 54, a senior support worker who had worked for the Richmond Fellowship for 20 years, was in the staff hub at Craighall Court, a supported accommodation project in Stirling. A resident, Kellyanne McNaughton, 33, walked in and stabbed her in the chest several times. She died later that day at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

Two colleagues were also stabbed. They persuaded McNaughton to release the knife and survived. McNaughton had not previously been considered violent, and an incident in her personal life that year was described in court as a “trigger”.

The outcome

McNaughton was arrested the same day. On 8 January 2024 at the High Court in Glasgow she pleaded guilty to culpable homicide on the basis of diminished responsibility. Sentencing was delayed while a bed was found. In June 2024 Lord Armstrong imposed an indefinite compulsion and restriction order at Priory Hospital Llanarth Court in Monmouthshire.

What went wrong

The staff had already done the escalating. Before the attack they phoned a psychiatrist McNaughton had been under and were told she had been discharged, with a referral to go through her GP. In the early hours of 7 March an NHS 24 call led to a decision not to send a doctor, after she calmed down again.

So the day passed with a resident in crisis and a route that ended at a GP appointment. Defence counsel told the court the process had been “incredibly complicated and challenging” and that staff were “thwarted” in attempts to engage psychiatric services. The BBC reported that the only high-risk facility in Scotland, the State Hospital at Carstairs, caters for men. The family told STV News about failed discussions over two clinics and Rampton Secure Hospital in England.

What it teaches

An escalation route is only a control if it ends somewhere. A discharged psychiatrist and a GP referral are not a plan for a resident in acute crisis on a night shift, and the worker who makes the calls needs to know what happens when both say no. That decision belongs to a manager, at the time, not to the support worker on shift.

The staff hub matters too. McNaughton walked into the room where the staff work, which is where the phone and the paperwork are. A staff base a resident can enter without knocking is not a refuge.

Rutherford was not alone, and this page does not pretend she was. Two colleagues were in the building and were also stabbed. The lesson is not that single cover failed: three trained staff could not get a psychiatric response for a woman they could see deteriorating.

Questions for the room

Evidence and limits

Confidence: confirmed. Six sources were read: BBC, Sky News, STV News (two reports), the Independent and Police Scotland. They agree on the plea, the order and the family’s statement. No fatal accident inquiry finding is on the public record, so the system failures remain contested between the family, defence counsel and the Scottish Government. The two colleagues who survived are not named here, though the sources name them.

Our lone working training covers the escalation route and the withdrawal plan for staff working low-staffed shifts.

Sources

Reviewed 20 October 2026.

All care and support cases  ·  Lone Worker Casebook

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