Awful story. This woman and her son clearly both needed professional intervention.
I would suspect that this family have been failed consistently for an extended period of time.
I spoke to a mother last year at a meetup for SEND children whose 12 year old was threatening other family members with a knife on a daily basis and also suffered from suicidal ideation, and then moved onto broken bottles and anything else he could improvise as a weapon. The police and social services didn't want to know other than blaming her parenting, the poor woman was terrified for herself and her children and clearly loved her child very much despite his issues. She was very lonely as her extended family and friends had all cut contact as her child was so dangerous and the father had given up and left. I often think of her and hope she and her son are safe and managed to get help.
I know of a lot of other mothers who are regularly attacked by their children with autism or mental health conditions and offered no real support for their behaviour, only parenting classes and blame, to the extent where some are scared to ask for help despite sustaining injuries from their children. Some off roll their children from school because school offer so little SEND support that their children are pushed to breaking point and then experience horrendous meltdowns at home (which are then blamed on poor parenting), putting the child and their family at risk of violence.
Parents with autistic children are disproportionately likely to get divorced, and generally it seems the father will bugger off and the mother gets the brunt of the meltdowns, often exacerbated by contact time with fathers who can't be bothered to learn about sensory needs or how to parent their child appropriately. It's the same complaints at every group I've been to by the majority of the women there.
I have no idea how any child with SEND and dangerous meltdowns or habits are supposed to grow up learning how to self regulate appropriately and not become prone to explosive rage or dangerous behaviour, with parents being given zero specialist guidance and support for complex needs that cannot be sorted out using normal parenting methods. It's not right that any mother should experience blame and a total lack of support when they have a child who is violent and old enough to cause injury, and yet it seems to be totally endemic to leave mothers with no practical support, even when schools and councils have it in a child's EHCP that the same child needs multiple adults to support at school for safety during times of crisis.
To add to the problem, our local NHS child mental health service will not offer any services for unrelated mental health conditions such as depression or anger issues to children diagnosed with autism. They just get immediately removed from the waiting list if the service finds out they've had a diagnosis of a neurodivergence.
That the victim messaged a social worker about the weapons and clearly nothing was done is absolutely typical of how mothers of children and young adults with dangerous behaviour are routinely treated in my local area, a long way from the poor victim. There will be more victims. There will be women and children suffering who are never recorded as victims as they never report the injuries they sustain and the fear and stress they are living in due to the fear of blame and their children being removed. There will be other victims who never make the papers. Things need to change.