A mentally ill knifeman from Kenton who attacked two strangers in random attacks in Kingsbury has been detained indefinitely.

Anton Allain, 21, Lodge Avenue, stabbed 34-year-old Anand Patel on a 183 bus with a 12cm knife then attacked Samir Rami, 28, in a supermarket in Kingsbury Road in July last year.

The Old Bailey heard Allain has a long history of paranoid schizophrenia and was formally diagnosed with mental issues in November 2010, but he had stopped taking his medication in the lead up to the attacks and had lost contact with his mental health team.

Neither of his victims needed medical treatment.

Ordering his indefinite detention in a psychiatric unit under the Mental Health Act, Judge Richard Hone said: “Your behaviour was entirely characteristic with the earlier diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

“For a combination of reasons your failure to take your medication was not then picked up as hopefully it should have been and then this extremely worrying attack occurred.

“I’m confident that under the care of the staff you will receive the treatment that you so plainly need.

“The other reason is so that innocent members of the public, strangers and so forth, are protected from any reoccurrence of what happened.

“It was due to a combination of failures to take medication and failure to communicate with the mental health team responsible for you that pre-dated that incident - it’s obviously vital that sort of situation never be allowed to reoccur.”

Allain admitted two counts of grievous bodily harm.

He will be detained indefinitely at Three Bridges medium security psychiatric unit in west London under section 37 and section 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983.