A hooded teenager who attacked a York shopkeeper with a bottle of rum has been jailed for eight months.
Lewis Young, 19, struck victim Rajkumar Ravi in the face during a terrifying, drink-fuelled attack at the Spar shop in Bridge Street.
York Crown Court heard that Young and a group of other teenagers converged on the convenience store at about 4.15am on June 16 last year.
Prosecutor Rob Galley said it appeared that one of the youths was trying to steal a packet of sandwiches.
Mr Ravi, who was working alone and was just about to finish his shift, remonstrated with them and tried to lock the front doors with an electrical control system to stop him leaving.
Three other men, including Young, tried to open the doors which were unlocked by Mr Ravi. Young walked up to the counter where the shopkeeper was standing behind the till.
“(Young) tried to walk behind the till but picked up a 70cl bottle of rum,” said Mr Galley.
The brave shopkeeper tried to grab the bottle as Young backed away, but then the hooded teenager pushed Mr Ravi backwards and punched him in the face, before striking him in the head “at least once” with the bottle of Captain Morgan rum.
The shopkeeper was almost knocked to the floor. Young fled the scene and Mr Ravi called police, who later found the rum bottle dumped on the floor.
It had Young’s fingerprints on it. They soon found Young, who was with his mates in the street, swigging from a can of lager.
Caught on CCTV
The incident was captured on the store’s CCTV which showed Young, wearing a blue top with the hood up, aiming the bottle at Mr Ravi’s head like an “improvised weapon”.
It caused a deep, 2cm cut to the shopkeeper’s chin. Mr Ravi was treated at York Hospital where he had to have five stitches.
Young was charged with wounding and attempted robbery but denied the second allegation. The prosecution ultimately accepted his guilty plea to unlawful wounding and dropped the attempted-robbery charge.
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Difficult childhood
He appeared for sentence via video link yesterday (Friday, February 25) from a prison custody booth after being locked up for a subsequent offence of carrying a blade.
That offence occurred on Christmas Day when Young was found with a lock knife in Stockton-on-the-Forest.
That landed him with a 20-week jail sentence, imposed in January. He was given another six weeks for failing to surrender to the court following his arrest for the bottle incident. He is still serving that sentence.
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Mr Galley said that Young – from York but with a ‘care-of’ address on Barlby Road, Selby – had 13 previous convictions for 17 offences including battery, affray and assaulting emergency workers.
At the time of the attack on the shopkeeper, he was on a youth-rehabilitation order.
Neil Cutte, mitigating, said the bottle attack was “impulsive” and that Young had endured a difficult childhood, much of which was spent in foster care. He had been living in a hostel at the time of the attack.
He said that Young had been drinking and “lost his temper” when the shopkeeper locked the door.
Recorder Sam Green QC told Young that the lone shopkeeper was “vulnerable to louts like you”.
“You attacked a lone and helpless shopkeeper with a bottle and you caused him a nasty injury,” added Mr Green.
Jailing Young for eight months, the judge said this would be consecutive to his existing prison sentence and would have been longer but for Young’s age and guilty plea.