A SECOND young man has been sentenced for kicking and stamping on a dad who was badly hurt in a vicious town centre gang attack.
Earlier this month, 19-year-old Reece Troy was locked up for the prominent role he played in violence which flared outside the Pinny pub in Penrith just after midnight on 1st October last year.
Words had been exchanged inside the Burrowgate premises. The victim recalled talking to Troy but then nothing more as he was punched, kicked and had his head banged against a skip during an attack by several people.
Another gang member, Callum Russell, 22, had joined in the violence “enthusiastically”, Carlisle Crown Court heard.
Judge Michael Fanning, who watched sickening CCTV footage of the brutal assault, told Russell as he was sentenced: “I see you kicking. I see you stamping. It is fortunate (the man’s) injuries, in relative terms for an offence of grievous bodily harm, were relatively slight,” said Judge Fanning.
Russell had admitted causing grievous bodily harm to the victim, who lost consciousness during the attack. He attended hospital with multiple injuries to his face, head and upper body.
Prosecutor Brendan Burke told the court: “The wounds were variously glued, steri-stripped and, in the case of the larger (6cm) head wound, stapled.”
The man — a firefighter and self-employed joiner — was off work for a fortnight and had lingering shoulder pain. “He didn’t want to see his children. He didn’t want them seeing the results of the attack,” added Mr Burke.
Russell, Troy and others had been drinking to the memory of a friend who had died a short time before the incident.
Russell was said by a probation officer to have shown genuine remorse for his involvement in the violence, and had not been drinking since.
“This is impulsive,” said his solicitor, Mark Shepherd, of his part in the assault. “He wasn’t, as the prosecution accept, the ringleader in respect of this.”
Russell, previously of Woodland Close, Hackthorpe, had tried to curb negative peer associations, and wanted to make positive changes to his life.
Concluding there was a realistic prospect of rehabilitation, Judge Fanning suspended an 18-month prison sentence for two years. Russell must complete rehabilitation work with the probation service and also a 90-day alcohol abstinence monitoring requirement.
“This is a wake-up call,” said Judge Fanning, who drew distinctions between Russell’s case and that of Troy.
The judge said Russell was now “walking a tightrope, and warned him: “Do not leave this courtroom punching the air, saying ‘yee ha’, thinking you have got away with it. You haven’t.”
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