The 16-year-old, who cannot be named due to legal reasons, hurled the 15kg blue chair 50 feet downwards towards punters at the busy mall in Stratford, east London, in March. He and his friend, then 14, were arrested when a video of the incident bearing the caption 'No way bro almost killed someone' went viral on social media.
The 16-year-old boy claimed that he and his friend regularly threw objects off bridges and trains as 'pranks'. He later admitted recklessly causing a public nuisance and criminal damage. Wearing a black Nike t-shirt, the 16-year-old boy appeared in the dock at Stratford Youth Court today accompanied by a Somali interpreter.
Presumably he knows enough English to make videos on social media, so why should the taxpayer fork out for an interpreter?
Mark Tooley, representing the 16-year-old, said he had been 'showing off'
'Perhaps he may well have sought to make friends in the wrong kind of way - it was called showing off when I was a kid.
I doubt this was the sort of thing kids routinely did when you were a kid. No-one had social media then. Nor Somali immigrants.
'It still applies here doing something criminally stupid and reckless, but happily causing no harm
'He is an immature young man yet to come anywhere close to full maturity and understanding - rehabilitation is the key.'
I can think of a more appropriate word beginning with ‘R’ - repatriation!
District Judge Shanta Deonarine said the two offences were 'so serious that no other sentence is appropriate other than a custodial sentence'.
For a paltry 8 months, in a youth offender centre holiday camp?
The judge said the offending was mitigated by the fact he was 'intellectually a low functioning individual with impaired intellectual ability'.
The description ‘Somali’ covered that, and why is it mitigation?
His 15-year-old friend denies both charges and will stand trial on December 2.
Wasting yet more taxpayer money. This one hits hard, because I have the misfortune to walk through this mall every office day.
It is a sad but acknowledged truth that maternal and childhood malnutrition affects cognitive ability and frontal lobe development (particularly important for assessing risk and consequences).
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for our society, the long-term effects of famine in the Horn of Africa have become the elephant in the room; who would now dare suggest that an entire ethnic group might be more likely than most to be of impaired intellectual ability and incapable of rational behaviour or, still worse, that allowing large numbers of them to take up residence in our cities might not be such a good idea?
Me, I dare to suggest it!
DeletePuzzles me: one of the reasons given to explain why UK is so attractive to immigrants is the fact that English is spoken here. Yet very few of them actually seem to be able to speak it.
ReplyDeleteI've often thought, listening on a bus, that a large cohort of ethnics have got on behind me, only to find when I get up to get off, they are as white as I am...
DeleteThe interpreter would have been for the parents of this savage . As he’s underage they have to be present and understand what’s going on.
ReplyDeleteIn other news , can anyone give me one positive thing that Somalian’s bring to this country ?
Jaded
Pirates? There are lots of highly entertaining movies about them. Keith Emerson and Pete Sinfield wrote an epic song about them. Everyone loves pirates don't they?
DeleteLOL!
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