A TEENAGER from Stratford has been given a chance to escape being jailed despite having tried to rob a couple on the doorstep of their home while on bail for breaking someone’s cheekbone.
Oliver McKinney pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to two charges of attempted robbery and two of causing damage.
After entering his pleas in late January, having earlier admitted unlawful wounding, two offences of common assault, and sending a malicious communication, he was remanded in custody while reports were prepared on him.
But at the resumed hearing the 19-year-old of Jago Green, Snitterfield Lane, had his sentence deferred for six months and was granted bail.
Prosecutor Richard Franck said last September McKinney deliberately shoulder-barged a university student in Stratford town centre after around 1am, and then launched an attack on him which left teh victim with four fractures to his cheekbone and eye socket.
On his Facebook page McKinney boasted about what he had done, and when the student’s mother responded by saying he would be taken to court, he sent her a series of abusive messages.
McKinney, who sat snarling in the dock as Mr Franck outlined the case, had been identified by someone who saw the incident, and had been arrested but granted bail.
Then on Christmas Eve a 64-year-old man was on his way back from the pub and was at his front door when McKinney came up behind him and demanded money.
McKinney then launched a savage attack on him, knocking him to the floor and kicking him to the head and body.
His 67-year-old partner, who had heard his key in the door, opened it to see why he had not come inside, and saw him being kicked on the ground by McKinney, who had also pulled off his glasses and smashed them.
The man managed to get away and get inside, but as his partner was shutting the door McKinney tried to force his way in, grabbed her glasses, and snapped them in two as he demanded money from her, but then ran off.
Graeme Simpson, defending, said McKinney had psychological issues but alcohol and cocaine were also factors in the offences.
Mr Simpson added McKinney had been diagnosed with ADHD when he was seven, and had been medicated for that ever since, and was then diagnosed with autism when he was 14 – but at 18 had stopped taking his medication.
Mr Simpson said after the first offences, McKinney, who works in his father’s business, went off the rails and began drinking even more because of the fear of what would happen.
Judge Sylvia de Bertodano indicated: “I do think it’s a very unusual case, and I don’t want to ruin the future of someone of his very young age – but I have a public duty as well.”
Deferring sentence, she said that if in September he was on top of his medical problems, had knocked drink and cocaine on the head by co-operating with the Recovery Partnership, and had committed no further offences, she would pass a sentence which would not involve him going to custody.
She told McKinney: “I am giving you this chance. Please, please take it.”
