Aycliffe man jailed for pummelling and biting taxi driverA TAXI driver has told how he is afraid to leave the house after being pummelled and bitten by a passenger in an unprovoked and inexplicable attack.
The cabbie was set upon in the early hours of the morning when he returned a fare to a house in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, a court heard.
Luke Dooney - who had joined the passenger when she stopped at a Tesco store to use the cashpoint machine - was jailed for 13 months for the assault.
The 25-year-old was on a suspended sentence for a similar unexplained attack on a man at a shop a year earlier, prosecutor Louise Harrison said.
Miss Harrison told Teesside Crown Court how the driver got an infection in his facial wound, no longer enjoys his job and worries about every fare.
In an impact statement, the victim said: "I always ask the controller if it is a regular customer or someone I don't know. I'm wary of who I pick up.
"I am worried to go out with my children, not knowing if I am going to bump into him in the street or not. I would rather stay at home than go out at all."
Dooney, of Shafto Way, Newton Aycliffe, admitted charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.
The court heard how when the car returned to the address, Dooney jumped out and warned the female passenger: "You're f***ing not paying for that taxi."
He then opened the door, lunged across the front seat and repeatedly punched the driver in the face, body and arm before biting him on the cheek.
Dooney fled when the cabbie called the police, but returned to the scene when officers turned up, and struggled with them as they tried to arrest him.
At the police station, he twice spat at a different officer - once in his face - as he behaved erratically, headbutting his cell door at one point.
Judge Tony Briggs described it as "disgusting behaviour" and told Dooney: "Taxi drivers provide a public service and are vulnerable to attack.
"These were, in each case, nasty attacks and the courts cannot ignore the circumstances in which they occurred. The sentence cannot be suspended."
John Turner, mitigating, told the court that Dooney had suffered from long-standing psychiatric problems for which he was only just getting help.
He urged Judge Briggs to spare him prison so he could continue with treatment, and said: "He would accept restorative justice as an approach.
"He would like to be put in touch with the taxi driver so he could make amends and say sorry . . . there is no explanation for this offence or the previous one."
source:
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/l ... xi_driver/
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