BEJETA: MUGGERS JAILED FOR USING STICK TO ATTACK TEENS
Three muggers who used a sharpened stick to steal a mobile phone and iPod from two teenagers were today (Mon) jailed for a total of four years.
Sokol Bejeta and Armando Rrukaj, both 18, and Saba Ceka, 20, set upon their 17-year-old victims after asking if they had credit on their mobile phones.
One of the boys was frisked and had his iPod touch and Blackberry smartphone stolen, while the other was pinned down and prodded in the stomach with the makeshift weapon.
He refused to give up his mobile phone and the robbers fled without it.
The trio, who were part of a group of five, denied involvement in the attack despite being arrested minutes later with the stolen goods.
They were subsequently convicted of robbery and attempted robbery after a trial at the Old Bailey.
Police have been unable to trace the other two attackers.
The mugging took place at around 10pm on March 24 after the group, of Albanian origin, stepped off a number 321 bus by the Yorkshire Grey roundabout, in Eltham, south east London opposite a branch of McDonald’s, and spotted the two teenagers waiting at the stop.
Ordering their detention in a young offenders’ institution, Judge Martin Stephens QC said they had acted in a ‘thoroughly intimidating and frightening way.’
‘You approached them and carried out the offences by a combination of threats and intimidation,’ he said.
‘You planned this attack – you were in a large group, at night, and you put your victims in considerable fear.’
Bejeta, who works for a family scrap metal business, was handed a 12-month sentence, while Rrukaj, a construction student at Hackney Community College in east London who has a previous robbery conviction, was detained for 15 months.
Judge Stephens imposed a heavier 21-month term on Ceka, a plumbing student with two previous robbery convictions, after hearing that he had been serving a suspended prison sentence at the time of the mugging.
Bejeta, of (28) Woodlands Street, Lewisham, southeast London; Ceka, of (18) Berkshire Gardens, Enfield, north London; and Rrukaj, of (Flat 8) St Aubin’s Court, De Beauvoir Estate, Hackney; east London, denied robbery and attempted robbery, but were convicted.
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