A serial armed robber escaped from a secure mental hospital during a communal cigarette break to resume his life of crime, a jury has been told.
John Slavin, 44, who was originally arrested after holding up a hotel receptionist and a woman bookshop worker at knifepoint, returned almost immediately to the scene of his last robbery to force another terrified staff member to again empty the till.
Slavin is being tried in his absence at London's Southwark Crown Court on charges including robbery.
The court was told four days later he struck at a vintage clothes store and, still wielding a knife, robbed two women workers of a laptop.
As he left he allegedly warned: "If you phone the police I will stab someone in the street."
Slavin, of no fixed address, is being tried in his absence on four counts of robbery involving cash and property worth several hundred pounds between March 25 and November 21, 2008.
He is also accused of possessing an offensive weapon and escaping from lawful custody.
Judge Stephen Robbins told jurors the defendant's mental illness meant he was not fit to plead, stand trial or give evidence.
Jurors were told he had been arrested and sent to the medium secure Shaftesbury Clinic in Springfield Hospital, Wandsworth, south-west London.
But after eight months he allegedly escaped as he and 11 other prisoners were allowed to leave their ward for a cigarette break in an enclosed yard.
