A KNIFE-WIELDING youth failed to win a cut in his ‘tough’ sentence despite pleading that he “came off worse” in a violent street brawl.
Adeel Hafeez, of Savile Road, Dewsbury, was locked up for 32 months at Leeds Crown Court in July after admitting violent disorder and possessing an offensive weapon.
Hafeez, now 21, went to a petrol station in Dewsbury armed with a kitchen knife after tensions between him and another teenager reached boiling point, London’s Appeal Court heard.
He claimed he had tried to calm things down, even contacting the teenager’s older brother to get his help in mediation, but that the other youth remained hostile.
Hafeez went to the petrol station intent on a confrontation and said he took the knife for protection in case things got out of hand.
But, once there, he found himself surrounded by a pack of 12 teenage boys, who ‘overpowered’ and beat him.
He challenged his sentence in London’s Appeal Court with claims that it failed to reflect his own injuries and the fact he never intended to use the knife.
But Mr Justice Popplewell, sitting with Lord Justice Richards and Mr Justice Kenneth Parker, said Hafeez “deliberately armed himself with the knife’’ and “when the fight started he took the knife out and wielded it.”
Onlookers must have been “terrified” by the spectacle said the judge and those who carried knives had to understand they would receive “substantial custodial sentences.”
“There is no mitigation in the fact he came off worse in the fight,” the judge noted, concluding that the sentence was “tough but not excessive.”
