A TEENAGER heard voices in his head telling him to kill before he knifed a homeless man sleeping underneath Bournemouth Pier.

The youth – who cannot be named – was just 16 when he armed himself with a folding knife and a BB gun before patrolling the town wearing latex gloves and a ‘snood’ which covered the lower half of his face.

After walking for miles, stopping briefly to buy an energy drink, he found a group of defenceless homeless people sleeping under the pier, randomly choosing one and stabbing him in the abdomen before running away.

His victim – Steven Dicks – would have died without prompt medical attention, a judge at Bournemouth Crown Court heard.

Prosecuting at the teenager’s sentencing, Carolyn Branford-Wood said the youth had been experiencing thoughts about killing someone for a few weeks prior to the offence.

The teenager, now 17, did not know his victim.

“[Mr Dicks was] awoken by an excruciating pain in his side,” Ms Branford-Wood said, adding that the wound measured six centimetres in depth, and that the victim lost a litre of blood.

“If he hadn’t received medical attention, it is likely he would have died from the injury,” she said.

After the attack, the teenager threw the knife in a bin and called police reporting his name, what he had done and where Mr Dicks was.

“He said he heard voices in his head saying, ‘Kill, kill’,” Ms Branford-Wood said.

Police investigations later revealed he had been searching for ways to kill people online.

The youth, who admitted wounding with intent and possession of an imitation firearm at the time of committing the offence on April 4 last year, has been released from a secure unit into a programme of supervision.

During the next three years, he will be constantly monitored by probation workers and trained psychiatrists with the aim of rehabilitating him.

Calling the case “disturbing”, Judge John Harrow said: “Because of your age, the law requires me to first consider the prospects of preventing further offending and your welfare.”

He said that if the teenager was sent into detention, he “would probably emerge untreated, with the same, if not more, problems”.

“The experts consider that your mental condition is susceptible to treatment. They have made sensible, realistic proposals which demand a lot of you but which, in my view, offer the best chance of rehabilitating you and managing and reducing your risk to the public,” he said.

“Hopefully, in time, you can repair your life and move forward.”