A young commuter escaped jail on Friday aftrer adm
A young commuter escaped jail on Friday aftrer admitting carrying
out two violent rush hour attacks in less than two weeks.
Bank clerk Barry Lindsay could have blinded a bus driver and
seriously injured a female tube passenger after twice losing his
temper as he travelled to work.
Southwark Crown Court heard the 21-year-old, of Bingham Road,
Croydon, carried out his first attack on May 16 this year as he
tried to catch a bus from Croydon town centre.
When the bus failed to stop the office worker lashed out and smashed
the glass in the vehicle’s door, showering passengers with broken glass
and sending a shard into the driver’s eye, said Miss Juliann
Manson, prosecuting.
She told the hearing: ‘The first incident happened in Croydon
when Mr Lindsay was trying to get a No.
54 bus.
The driver did not
see him running for the bus and closed the doors before pulling out
slowly into heavy traffic.
‘The defendant believed the driver had deliberately ignored him
and hit out at the glass door so hard that it shattered.
Some of
the glass went into the driver’s eye and he had to go to hopsital
where he was given anti-biotics for an infection it caused.
‘
Explaining the second, May 26, incident, Miss Manson added: ‘Mr
Lindsay was waiting on an underground station platform in central
London when he came across a 32-year-old woman whom he asked to
move out of his way.
‘
Counsel said she hit him with her bag and he pushed her in the
leg against a wall, hitting her hard in the face.
She had to take two weeks off work for an ulcerated leg
which developed as a result of being pushed against the wall.
Shame-faced Lindsay pleaded guilty to two charges
of inflicting actual bodily harm.
After hearing that he was now ‘bitterly shamed’ of the
two incidents, Assistant Recorder Timothy Workman, ordered him
to carry out 80 hours community service combined with a one year
probation order, as well as an order to pay the injured victims a
total of pnds stlg 400 compensation.
The recorder told him: ‘I am prepared to accept that the
injury to the bus driver was not due to any intent to assault
him but rather as a result of your reklessness.
‘I am also prepared to accept that in the incident on the
underground you were struck first.
‘
ENDS
