Drug addict boyfriend who strangled girlfriend to death before driving around with her body 'receives thousands in benefits' from prison

A drug addict boyfriend who strangled his girlfriend to death before driving around with her body in the passenger seat is eligible to receive thousands of pounds in benefits while locked up. Gogoa Lois Tape, 28, killed Kennedi Westcarr-Sabaroche, 25, outside his home in London, where the couple's one-year-old daughter slept, in April 2024.
He then drove around with her body buckled up in the car seat next to him for nearly two hours, even finding the time to buy some cigarettes and send a text message from her phone to her friend, Judge Freya Newbery told the Inner London Crown Court.
She confirmed Tape had been a regular cannabis smoker for 10 years and suggested the habit contributed to a 'period of noticeable mental health decline'.
But the killer avoided prison after being convicted of manslaughter thanks to a diminished responsibility claim owing to his poor mental health. 
He was instead detained under sections 37 and 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983 and sent to a secure psychiatric unit where he will likely be eligible to receive universal credit payments.
It means Tape is not classed as a prisoner and will not be transferred to a jail if he is released from hospital.
As such, he is entitled to claim for up to £400 a month of benefits, unlike if he was detained under section 45A which excludes a person from receiving the taxpayer-funded money.
Given that bed and board is already being paid for by the state, patients can rack up vast sums of benefit payments. 
Judge Newbery said a doctor's analysis had told her Tape 'has recovered from his frank psychotic symptoms with treatment, but he is still ill with schizophrenia, in low mood, and still with limited insight, which means there's a risk of disengagement from treatment unless he's in hospital'.
She added: 'The reduction in the risk to the public posed by the defendant is dependent on his response to treatment and his risk is best managed in hospital and by forensic psychiatric services in the years ahead.' 
The Daily Mail has approached the Department for Work and Pensions for comment. 
It comes after it was revealed last year that triple Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane can claim taxpayer funded state benefits while he is detained in a psychiatric hospital.
The paranoid schizophrenic, 32, is entitled to Universal Credit while being held at high-security Ashworth Hospital, which he can use to splash out on clothes, electronics, books and food. 
Calocane fatally stabbed 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar before killing his third victim, Ian Coates - a 65-year-old school caretaker four months from retirement - and stealing his white van.
Prosecutors decided not to charge Calocane with murder and instead accepted his guilty plea of manslaughter with diminished responsibility.
It meant the killer was able to swerve being sent to a harsher Category A prison if he was convicted of murder, sparking the fury of the victims' heartbroken relatives who raged against the decision.