BENT: JUNKIE CLEARED OF CRACKHOUSE HORROR

A crack addict accused of stabbing a partygoer with a broken wine bottle has been cleared after he told his trial he was acting to protect a friend.

Leon Bent, 54, was said to have repeatedly slashed unarmed Nigel Evelyn-White in the head and body, leaving him covered with blood.

Prosecutors claimed he attacked the victim alongside his friend Joyce Kamanga, who had started punching him without any provocation during a party at a mutual friend’s flat.

But Bent was acquitted following a short trial at Southwark Crown Court today after he told the jury it was Evelyn-White who had been threatening him with a bottle.

The court heard that on the night of January 13 last year, he and Kamanga had gone to the basement flat in Cumberland Street in Pimlico to drink and smoke crack cocaine.

Bent said the other people in the flat, including Evelyn-White, were all fellow crack addicts, adding that the alleged victim had repeatedly tried to touch Miss Kamanga’s legs as they sat on a sofa together.

He told the jury that he had seen Kamanga hitting Evelyn-White in the face with what looked like a can, after which Evelyn-White armed himself with a wine bottle and threatened to attack her with it.

Bent insited he put himself in between them, and had grappled with the alleged victim, adding that the bottle had broken during the struggle and admitting that he had punched and headbutted him.

He said: ‘These are just natural instincts with me because I’m a fist fighter. I don’t use weapons.’

Bent, of (2) Longcause, Plymouth, denied wounding with intent.

The jury heard that they would not be asked to deliberate in the case of Miss Kamanga.

ENDS