What happened
On 11 January 2025 Achamma Cherian, 57, was on shift as a nurse at the Royal Oldham Hospital. At about 22:35 GMT Romon Haque, 38, asked her for medication.
She asked him to wait. Haque got out of bed, walked over to where she stood, took a pair of scissors from his pocket and stabbed her three times, in the face, neck and hands, from behind. Other staff restrained him. She spent a night in intensive care and had surgery on her wrist.
Haque had been admitted three days earlier for a mental health assessment. His symptoms were later found to stem from drug and alcohol withdrawal rather than a psychotic illness. In interview he said only that he “heard voices”; two psychiatrists judged him fit to stand trial.
The outcome
Haque pleaded guilty to possession of a bladed article at an earlier hearing. He was found guilty of attempted murder at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court and, on 11 February 2026, sentenced to 22 years’ custody with a six-year extended licence, a 28-year total.
Crown Prosecutor Claire Aitken said he had made “a bid to end her life, simply because he didn’t want to wait for his medication”.
What went wrong
The attack came from behind, at night, from a patient who had asked for something and been told to wait. Greater Manchester Police records that he got out of his bed, walked over to where she stood, and pulled the scissors from his pocket.
The sources do not record the ward layout, how many staff were on duty that night, or whether the scissors were ward stock. They do record that, on the night, he had not been assessed as needing close observation.
That is the system question here. A man three days into an assessment was on a ward with a plan that did not require anyone to watch him closely, and nothing shows the plan being reviewed when the diagnosis changed.
What it teaches
A nurse on a ward at night is a lone worker in the sense that matters: she is the person a patient approaches, and help is down a corridor. The controls that count are physical. Where can she stand so nobody comes at her back? How does she raise an alarm without leaving the patient? Who comes when she does?
The second control is the assessment. A patient admitted for a mental health assessment is a patient whose risk can be read wrongly: withdrawal can look like psychosis and then behave like something else. When the working diagnosis changes, the observation level has to be looked at again that day.
Our lone working training covers night-shift lone working and the alarm arrangements that go with it.
Questions for the room
- The nurse was attacked from behind. What does your ward layout do to keep staff aware of who is behind them?
- Scissors were in a patient’s pocket. How are sharps and other potential weapons controlled on your ward overnight?
- He had been in for three days when the diagnosis changed. Who checks the observation level when that happens?
- At half past ten at night, who is close enough to reach a colleague in under a minute?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The BBC, the CPS North West release and Greater Manchester Police were read. The BBC and the CPS give the date as 11 January 2025 and the police narrative gives 12 January, so this page uses the 11th and notes the difference. Her first name appears as “Achamma” in the BBC report and “Acheema” in the vault record; this page uses the BBC’s. No source describes staffing levels or the ward’s observation policy.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.