{"id":424105,"date":"2026-02-13T19:25:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T19:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/424105\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T19:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T19:25:12","slug":"chatham-soldier-fortunate-to-survive-stabbing-by-anthony-esan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/424105\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatham soldier &#8216;fortunate&#8217; to survive stabbing by Anthony Esan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Esan pleaded guilty to attempted murder in January, after the case had been delayed several times amid concerns over his mental health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He had made several unsuccessful attempts to join the British Army in the years before his attack, with his first application in 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That same year, he had been referred to mental health services as he appeared to be mentally unwell and reported hearing voices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c5y5jve70zno\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">His mother  believed he should not have been in the community due his mental state<\/a>, the court was told.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Eileen, who sings in a military wives choir, said the couple welcomed Esan&#8217;s guilty plea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;For us not having to relive the ordeal through a trial and subject poor jurors to our horrendous ordeal, there was a massive relief that he had, in our minds, done the right thing and pleaded guilty to his crimes,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esan pleaded guilty to attempted murder in January, after the case had been delayed several times amid concerns&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-424105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}