A transgender Metropolitan police worker accused of attempting to murder her brother was suffering from a drug-fuelled depressive unconscious episode when she beat him over the head with an iron pole, a court heard yesterday.

From Monday: Transgender police worker who battered her brother over the head with an iron bar appears in court for attempted murder trial

Helen Doe, 53, hit her brother Kenneth Doe, 64, several times over the head with the one-and-a-half-foot long pole as he slept in their Mitcham home in Montgomery Close on July 5 last year.

Discovered by paramedics covered in blood, he suffered severe lacerations to his head and a fractured finger during the attack at their shared home in Montgomery Close.

Miss Doe, who worked for the Metropolitan Policed Uniform Services, later told police that when she saw the blood she suddenly realised what she was doing, ran downstairs and called 999.

After her arrest, she asked a police officer for a cuddle. Waiting in the police van, she then told another officer: "I don't want to hurt anyone. I wanted to do it. I wanted to kill him."

She also said she wanted to go to a "mental home" and signed a statement agreeing what she had said, a jury at Kingston Crown Court heard yesterday.

The Croydon Trans Group campaigner had been prescribed a dosage of anxiety drug propanolol and depression drug duloxetene three weeks before she attacked her brother, the court heard.

She had been taking propanolol since June 2012. Six months later, she was also prescribed depression drug fluoxetine, which was stopped nine months later because it was thought to be causing her nightmares.

On June 10, three weeks before she attacked her brother, she was prescribed duloxetene for her depression and the propanolol dosage was increased.

She was also in the process of undergoing a sex change and was taking hormone tablets.

Wimbledon Times:

Helen Doe (left) handing out Easter eggs at a charity event last year 

Four expert pharmacologists who gave evidence in the trial all agreed that it was possible that the combination of drugs she was taking caused her violent behaviour.

Summing up, Judge Paul Dodgson said: "The defense case is that she was not acting unlawfully because she says that she had no conscious intention of hurting her brother, let alone killing him and her actions in doing so was completely involuntary."

In criminal law, if you carry out an act involuntarily, you cannot be convicted of it, he explained.

But he said the prosecution argued that her statements to police after the attack proved that she knew what she had done, and was acting consciously when she attacked her brother.

The jury has yet to reach a verdict.