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| Knifeman ‘lucky not to
be facing murder charge’ |
Addict given four-month suspended
sentence for stabbing teen
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Marcus Glenister
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A KNIFEMAN who stabbed a teenager at West Hampstead train station
was lucky not to be facing murder charges at the Old Bailey, a Magistrate
said on Tuesday.
Marcus Glenister, 36, a methodone addict, was given a four-month
suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm
at Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court.
He admitted stabbing Craig Redway, 15, with a fishing knife last
August on the platform of the Thameslink station after an altercation
in the street outside. Redway was treated with sutures to a 5cm
gash next to his pelvis at hospital and identified ginger-haired
Glenister to police in the street in May this year.
Neither Redway nor a 12-year-old boy – a key prosecution witness,
with Redway at the time of the stabbing – attended court, although
magistrate Quentin Purdy accepted that Glenister had been provoked
in a spitting incident and that Redway and the boys’ string
of convictions showed “their characters leave something to
be desired”.
Redway appeared on the front page of the New Journal in April when
he and his mother complained that he had been unfairly targeted
for an Asbo. But sentencing Glenister, who had two previous convictions
for carrying knives himself, Mr Purdy said: “You seem to have
an unfortunate interest in carrying weapons that can be used to
cause significant injury.
“I have seen your previous convictions and it is clear you
have not stopped carrying knives as a result.
“People commonly appear in the dock of the central criminal
court at the Old Bailey in these sorts of cases.
“There is no such thing as a blunt knife which cannot cause
serious injury and knives go all too easily through the abdomen,
and then all too easily through the vital organs.”
Glenister’s lawyer, Vanessa Bombas, said he carried the blade
in self-defence after being robbed of his methodone prescriptions
on several occasions.
His sentence was suspended for 18 months, meaning he will not serve
time unless he is convicted again within that period. He was ordered
to pay £50 costs but Mr Purdy dismissed the suggestion of
compensation to Redway as “he hasn’t taken enough interest
to attend today”.
DC Mike Ganly of the British Transport Police, who led the investigation,
said: “Craig Redway had done nothing to deserve what happened
to him in this case and it is our duty to protect anybody, no matter
what.
“The law is still the law.” |
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