Teenager who stabbed a taxi driver is locked upA 15-YEAR-OLD boy has been locked up after stabbing a taxi driver nine times.
His victim, a 42-year-old man from Benfleet, said he feels “like a China doll” after the attack and said he could have been killed.
His teen attacker, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in a youth detention centre, after admitting malicious wounding, possessing a knife, and three counts of criminal damage.
The judge said he could have been sent to prison for 14 years had he been an adult and added knife crime had become “endemic” during the sentencing at Basildon Crown Court on Friday.
The youth had gone on a drink and drug-fuelled bender in Benfleet when he started running past parked cars in Linden Road – scratching them with a kitchen knife.
In the early hours of September 20 the driver, who works for Benfleet based Steve’s Taxis, was called to pick up two girls the youth was with.
But things turned nasty as they left, when the youth kicked the car.
The driver got out of the car to tell the lad off, but then he felt what he thought were punches to his side several times – he was actually being stabbed.
One of the slashes cut through the taxi driver’s left kidney and, as the Echo reported at the time, it was feared the organ would have to be removed.
In a victim impact statement read out in court, the taxi driver said: “Internally I am very uncomfortable. I feel like a China doll and if I do any physical activity it can cause me pain.
“When I was in hospital I felt like my stomach was going to explode. I am not the same person as I was before. I am constantly looking over my shoulder.”
He added hewill no longer work nights, which had a huge financial implication for him.
The youth’s solicitor, Thomas Nicholson-Pratt, said the teenager was on a downward spiral after being bullied at school.
Recorder Adam Hiddleston said: “Knife crime is endemic in our community. Young people seem to carry knives almost as a matter of course.
“With alcohol and drugs involved, all too often those knives are used.”
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/11797403._/
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