A student who donned a disguise and hurled missile

A student who donned a disguise and hurled missiles at police during the rioting of last summer’s Stop the City demonstration began a nine month sentence today (Tuesday).

Owain (correct) Shepherd threw discarded plastic water bottles and drinks cans at officers struggling to control a crowd of more than 5,000 protesting a global capitalism.

London’s Southwark Crown Court heard the 20-year-old’s ‘blood boiled’ after a friend was struck with a truncheon.

The leisure and tourism student, of Dawley Road, Hayes, Mddx, admitted a charge of affray on June 18, 1999.

Ordering him to serve the penalty at a Young Offenders Institution, Judge George Bathurst-Norman accepted Shepherd was not the worst of the rioters to appear before him.

After watching video film of the defendant throwing missiles, his face disguised by a bandanna type mask, the judge said:

‘On a number of occasions you are sitting down and even helping hold others
back.

‘What you threw was at best empty plastic bottles and at worst empty coke cans.

‘

But he said the matter was aggravated by a conviction for affray and criminal damage in 1998 when Shepherd had confronted a car driver and things again overheated.

The judge said Shepherd’s actions helped ‘whip up feeling against the police, who have a difficult enough job, and cause others to react violently towards them.

‘

Mr Mohammed Khamisa, defending, said his client was not a member of any extremist organisation and did not hold any extremist views.

‘From the videos, there is a core of 10 to 15 of protesters egging on youngsters there to get involved, and, I am afraid, Shepherd fell into the trap having seen what happened to his friend,’ he said.

‘He is shamed an embarrassed about what he got up to.

‘

Counsel said Shepherd had a good education and had worked abroad at ski resorts before returning to this country in the hope of completing a degree.

Mr Khamisa said the defendant’s respectable parents had been devastated by their son’s troubles, which had become the talk of the village community in which they lived.

ends