Violent offenders and drug dealers among those jailed in Bradford

James Hill became enraged when one of his victims, herself a mother, suggested that the youngster aged about two should be safely strapped into a car seat, Bradford Crown Court heard.

The sickening violence was caught on camera and showed 42-year-old Hill throwing punches and kicks in Kirkgate, Silsden, shortly before 10pm on April 17 last year.

Hill, formerly of an address in Woodside, Bradford, now of no fixed abode, was sen-tenced on a video link to HMP Leeds where he was remanded.

He pleaded guilty to attempted Section 18 grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning ac-tual bodily harm, and criminal damage to a former partner’s money jar in May last year.

Prosecutor Laura McBride said the two female friends were walking in the street when they saw the BMW with the child in the front seat and a woman in the back of the vehi-cle.

When the concern was raised, Hill demanded: ‘What did you say?’ approached them and spat in their faces.

He then launched the attack helped by his partner who got out of the car to join in the assaults.

He repeatedly punched one woman in the face and aimed a kick at her head when she was lying in the road. Her friend was also punched and her mobile phone left smashed in the street when he drove away.

The victim of the attempted Section 18 GBH was taken to hospital with a cut face, black eye, bruising and grazing. Her friend also sustained a black eye and bruising.

Both had been mentally scarred by the violence and were now anxious and scared when out and about. One had suffered a panic attack when she went into a shop near to where she was attacked.

Hill, a heating engineer, had 21 previous convictions for 43 offences, including two of battery.

His barrister, Caroline Abraham, conceded that the offences were ‘deeply unpleasant’ from a man with ‘an unenviable criminal record.’ But Hill was doing very well on remand, training other inmates and acting as a mentor.

He was remorseful and working to address his issues surrounding anger.

Judge Ahmed Nadim labelled him ‘a violent thug,’ saying it was ‘a ferocious and sus-tained attack.’ 2 / 10 One of the women had been courageous enough to be concerned that the young child was exposed to danger. He had taken her to the ground and aimed a kick at her head.

The child in the BMW was a witness to his ‘atrocious behaviour.’ The women had suffered black eyes, cuts and bruising and enduring damage to their confidence, Judge Nadim said.

• A MAN was jailed for five years for stabbing a drug dealer in the neck, chest and abdo-men because he had been ‘ripped off.’

Luke McInerny attacked his 26-year-old victim in the street, knifing him repeatedly and leaving him with potentially life-threatening injuries, Bradford Crown Court heard.

McInerny, 33, of Pemberton Drive, Listerhills, Bradford, took the kitchen knife to the scene of the assault in Keighley on January 13, 2021.

Prosecutor Christopher Dunn told the court that the victim was stabbed when he ar-rived in a Ford Fiesta at 8.30am.

Members of the public assisted him after he was knifed. He was taken by ambulance first to Leeds General Infirmary and then to the city’s St James University Hospital.

He had sustained multiple stab wounds after he was knifed in the neck, the chest, the abdomen and his back near to his spine.

McInerny was also taken to hospital because he was bleeding heavily from his wrist. He told the police he had been ‘ripped off’ over drugs and then did not answer any further questions.

He went on to plead guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

The victim, who lives in Keighley, needed emergency surgery. He had a punctured thorax, injury to his liver and chest wounds. He needed a second operation when a fur-ther chest drain was inserted and he wasn’t discharged from the care of his doctors for three months.

He had since made a full recovery, the court was told.

McInerny had no previous convictions for violence and had not offended at all for 16 years before committing this offence.

His barrister, Carl Kingsley, said he had a personality disorder and his childhood had been blighted by abuse. He began taking drugs in his teens and became addicted.

Mr Kingsley said the complainant in the case was a dealer of drugs.

Judge Graham Reeds KC said that the defendant was a habitual drug user who decided his dealer had swindled him. He took a knife to meet him and ‘things got rough.’ He first attacked the man in his car and when they both got out the vehicle rolled down the hill. McInerny then pursued him with the knife held in ‘an attacking position.’ He himself suf-fered a significant wrist injury when his victim began to get the better of him.

The man had a stab wound near his spine, a wounded neck, a punctured lung and injury to his liver. He was expected at the time to make a full recovery and that seemed to be an accurate prognosis.

Judge Reeds said the weapon was never recovered but it was likely from the CCTV to be a kitchen knife with a blade of significant length. But McInerny had no previous convictions for violence. It was essentially an isolated in-cident two years’ ago. There had been delay in bringing the case to court that wasn’t his fault.

He had a troubled upbringing with other psychiatric problems. A MAN was jailed for five years and three months for knifing his friend 12 times, frac-turing his shoulder blade and puncturing his lung.

Lee Joyce attacked his victim at an address in Hopkinson Street, Halifax, late on July 8 last year, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Joyce, 26, of Calder Rise, Halifax, pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with in-tent.

Prosecutor Christopher Dunn said that he admitted the offence on the day of his trial this week. He was originally charged with attempted murder but the Crown accepted his guilty plea to Section 18 wounding.

Mr Dunn said Joyce and his victim were workmates and friends until they fell out and a physical altercation took place.

Joyce then stabbed the man 12 times in the torso, three times to his front and nine times to his back.

He was taken to Leeds General Infirmary and transferred to St James University Hospi-tal. He had 12 injuries consistent with knife wounds. One had penetrated the chest cav-ity and damaged a lung. The man’s liver was also damaged.

Mr Dunn said the injuries were potentially life-threatening and severe force was needed to fracture the man’s shoulder blade. A chest drain was inserted and he was in hospital for four days.

The police found a blood-stained knife down the sofa at the Hopkinson Street address.

The day after the stabbing, Joyce told a relative: ‘I’ve done something really bad. I’ve stabbed a lad…I stabbed, stabbed, stabbed him.”

Joyce said he was being attacked with a knife and a table leg and acted in self-defence.

But Mr Dunn said when he was examined at the police station, he had sustained only minor grazing. Michelle Colborne KC said in mitigation that Joyce did not go looking for trouble that night, he responded to it.

There was no evidence that he had taken cocaine before the stabbing. He panicked and took the drug afterwards.

Miss Colborne said Joyce acted out of excessive self-defence and the victim was dis-charged from hospital in a matter of days.

The men were friends and workmates and there had been no previous animosity be-tween them. There was a lack of premeditation and that was a significant factor.

Joyce had post-traumatic stress disorder after a very serious car accident in 2016 that left him in a wheelchair for a long time.

Judge Jonathan Gibson conceded that the offence was committed out of ‘excessive self-defence.’ Joyce believed that he needed to defend himself but then acted in an unjusti-fied manner.

The man’s injuries were grave and potentially life-threatening if left untreated and could even have been fatal with treatment.

Joyce had serious medical and psychological difficulties after the major accident in 2016. He was the father of two young children who he would not be able to provide for while in custody.

Judge Gibson made an indefinite restraining order banning Joyce from contacting his victim or going near any address where he is staying or residing.

• A 32-YEAR-OLD man who assaulted his partner twice in the space of a few weeks was jailed for four years.

Bradford Crown Court heard that Daniel Spencer had previous convictions for breaching non-molestation orders which had been applied for by two other women.

Judge Graham Reeds KC said he had a past record indicating abusive behaviour towards partners.

He pleaded guilty to two charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in May and June last year.

Prosecutor Laura McBride said Spencer, of Kirkgate, Huddersfield, got into an argument with his partner at an address in Sowerby Bridge and grabbed her by the neck. He was strangling her to the point where she started to collapse and he then let go.

“She said she felt she was going to die because she couldn’t breathe,” Miss McBride said.

Spencer kicked her legs from under her and she banged her head on some dumbbells.

She managed to telephone her father after running upstairs and he alerted the police.

Spencer was aggressive and irate when they arrived but following his arrest he was re-leased on bail with conditions not to contact the woman.

A few weeks later the couple went on a caravan holiday to Skegness and during another assault at a nightclub Spencer tried to bite her on the cheek.

 In her victim impact statement she described suffering from anxiety and nightmares and feeling constantly on edge.

The court heard that Spencer, who was remanded in custody since August last year, had been convicted of breaching previous non-molestation orders, in 2009 and 2015.

His barrister Abigail Langford said this was the first time he had been convicted of actual violence.

Miss Langford said that Spencer was remorseful and deeply sorry for his actions. He in-tended to move away from the area when he was released from prison.

Judge Reeds said Spencer’s behaviour was callous and disgraceful.

He was jailed for three years for the first assault involving strangulation and a further year for the second assault committed while he was on bail.

The judge also made an indefinite restraining order which bans Spencer from contacting the woman directly or indirectly.

• A JEALOUS man who hurled two homemade ‘petrol bombs’ at the door of a care home in revenge for a suspected affair was jailed for four years.

The judge commended the team of police officers who had investigated the early hours arson attack on the Lee Mount care home in Halifax as he locked up Safraz Ahmed.

Bradford Crown Court heard that Ahmed threw two bottles of petrol at the office front door of the premises that was home to 25 residents. A number of staff were also on duty that night.

Judge Jonathan Gibson told him: “What would have happened had the office door taken light and had there been a fire at the care home, of course, one dreads to think.”

Prosecutor Chloe Hudson said that Ahmed suspected his partner, who worked at the care home, was having a relationship with a male colleague.

On the evening before the arson attack, he had confronted his partner outside the care home and made a threat to kill the man.

When the police were contacted he left the area but in the early hours he drove with an associate to the family home of the man in Leeds and after disguising himself with a hoodie he set about smashing a number of windows at the property.

The court heard that he caused damage to the windows and CCTV equipment totalling about £5,000 before driving back to Halifax to attack the care home.

Miss Hudson said Ahmed stopped off at a petrol station and it was just after 2am when he approached the door of the care home, again using the hoodie as a disguise.

“In effect, the defendant had manufactured two makeshift petrol bombs which he threw at the door of the care home intending that it would catch fire in some way,” she said.

The first bounced off the door and quickly went out, but two minutes later Ahmed re-turned and threw a second bottle. Miss Hudson said it caught light and landed close to the door and a nearby fence.

Luckily there was only minor damage to the door and some scorch marks.

Ahmed, 39, of Parkinson Lane, Halifax, was arrested a few days later but he denied be-ing involved in the attacks and claimed he didn’t even know who the man was.

The court heard that the arson attack had had a significant impact on the man, his fam-ily and staff at the home. He had been absolutely devastated by what had happened.

Ahmed pleaded guilty to arson being reckless as to whether life would be endangered on June 19 last year, criminal damage on the house in Leeds, and common assault on his then partner.

Barrister Gillian Batts said Ahmed, who was remanded in custody, had expressed re-morse in a letter to the judge.

He had been diagnosed with depression following the death of a close friend and he was concerned that his partner had started a relationship with a work colleague, even though she had denied it.

Judge Gibson said Ahmed had become very jealous but the assault, criminal damage and arson were a wholly inappropriate way to deal with that.

“This case resulted out of your feelings of jealousy and revenge because of the relation-ship you believed was happening with your wife,” he said.

The offences involved significant planning and organisation and there were multiple people potentially endangered.

Judge Gibson imposed an indefinite restraining order which bans Ahmed from contact-ing any of the complainants in the case or attending at any of the properties involved.

Miss Hudson said the police officers had spent a large amount of time on telecommuni-cations and CCTV work to track down Ahmed. Judge Gibson commended them for their work on the case.

• A CANNABIS farmer who pretended to be the cleaner when he was caught locking the door on an £80,000 drugs crop in a Bradford house was jailed for two years and three months.

Ali Khalil had a video on his phone showing him cutting up cannabis plants and texts proving that he was growing and selling it, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Khalil, 30, of Douglas Towers, Radwell Drive, off Manchester Road, Bradford, pleaded guilty to production of cannabis on the day of his trial in October and was remanded into custody.

Prosecutor Ian Cook said the police arrived in Greaves Street, Little Horton, on May 13, 2021, to catch him locking the door on the crop.

Three rooms had been given over to the production of cannabis with a total of 88 ma-ture plants discovered and a follow-on crop of 111 seedlings in a tent in the living room.

Mr Cook said there were photos of dried cannabis on the phone and evidence that Khalil had taken 40 taxi journeys to the address from his home.

The potential yield from the mature plants was 9.24 kilos with a street value of almost £80,000 and a wholesale value of up to £55,000.

Simon Hustler said in mitigation that Khalil had come to the UK in 2009 to make some-thing of himself and was deeply ashamed that he had become a drugs producer.

He had at first obtained a variety of jobs in factories and car washes and as a cleaner but the lockdown meant that the work had dried up.

Mr Hustler said he had no previous convictions and the grow was ‘a relatively modest set-up.’ He made comparisons to some cases where the cannabis farms contained thousands of plants and the production was on an industrial scale.

“He had no champagne lifestyle,” Mr Hustler said.

Khalil lived in a modest high-rise flat and did not even own a car. Mr Hustler said the flat was ‘not in the most desirable of locations.’ Khalil’s remand into custody had been a salutary experience and he had learned his les-son.

Recorder Mark McKone KC pointed to the harm the use of cannabis causes, including psychosis and social problems.

But he accepted that Khalil was not leading a lavish lifestyle and said he was a man of previous good character.

He ordered that the cannabis plants and growing paraphernalia be forfeit and de-stroyed.

• A DRUG dealer caught on Manningham Lane in Bradford with 59 wraps of heroin and high purity crack cocaine had his four-year prison sentence for housebreaking and drugs trafficking extended.

Antonio Dimeo, 38, was the front seat passenger in a Seat Ibiza stopped by the police shortly after midnight on January 7, 2021, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Alisha Kaye said officers on patrol spotted something being thrown out of the vehicle that contained three people.

Cannabis was being smoked in the car and Dimeo was holding wraps of crack cocaine and heroin. He had bags of drugs in his boxer shorts and in all 30 wraps of heroin and 29 of crack cocaine were seized by the police.

Miss Kaye said the cocaine was 96 per cent purity. In all the drugs were valued at almost £600.

8 / 10 Dimeo made no comment to all questions asked by the police.

He went on to plead guilty to two offences of possession with intent to supply Class A drugs.

The court heard that his 14-page criminal record included offences of burglary, shop theft and possession of drugs.

Miss Kaye said Dimeo, who was sentenced on a video link to HMP Wealstun, was al-ready serving a total sentence of imprisonment of four years. It was made up of three years for house burglary, imposed in January last year, and 12 months on top of that for Class A drug dealing.

His barrister, Paul Canfield, said Dimeo had run up a drugs debt after he became ad-dicted to crack cocaine. He was dealing to pay it off and he committed the burglary for the same reason.

He had been beaten up by people he owed money to and put in hospital for a week.

Worry over this case had added to the anxiety he was suffering in prison.

Judge Jonathan Gibson said Dimeo had been caught with 30 wraps of heroin and 29 of high purity crack cocaine.

He had numerous offences on his record but he had the offer of work on his release and was planning to relocate from the area.

Judge Gibson jailed Dimeo for six months on top of the four years he is currently serving.

He said that would add a further three months to his release date, which had been scheduled for January next year.

After he was sentenced, Dimeo said: ‘Thank you greatly for today. Thank you.’

• A LONELY refugee who set fire to his Bradford flat hoping it would bring fellow Eritre-ans to see him was jailed for three years and four months.

Mukur Ftwi had been cautioned for starting a similar fire at multi-occupancy accommo-dation in Hull when he used a lighter to ignite bedding at the address in Upper Rushton Road, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Ftwi, 32, who had since been remanded in Leeds Prison, was at a high risk of reoffend-ing, his probation officer reported.

He pleaded guilty to reckless arson on June 23 last year and was assisted by a Tigrinya interpreter for the hearing.

Prosecutor Robert Mochrie said Ftwi was an illegal immigrant seeking asylum and await-ing a decision from the Home Office.

The fire he started took hold and there was significant heat and smoke damage to the flat. The man living next door was alerted by his smoke alarm and was able to leave.

Mr Mochrie said the blaze did not spread beyond Ftwi’s room. When the police and fire service attended, he was standing some distance away holding two bags of clothing and staring at the fire.

He was detained and admitted setting fire to his bedding with a lighter. He said he was lonely and he ‘hoped the fire would bring people from his country over to him.’ Ftwi had damaged a hotel in January, 2022, it was disclosed. No action was taken but when he was moved to Hull he set fire to a multi-occupancy hotel and received a cau-tion. Soon afterwards, he was Sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Mr Mochrie said this was at least the second time he had set fires.

Defence barrister, John Batchelor, said Ftwi had always accepted responsibility for caus-ing the fire.

He conceded that the court would have regard to the caution but Ftwi was very unwell at the time.

He was an asylum seeker who had spent six years in Germany before coming illegally by boat to this country.

The arson was a desperate act when he was isolated from other Eritrean people. He was now in a prison cell on his own with no English and just a television.

Judge Colin Burn said Ftwi had committed criminal damage at his first hotel accommo-dation and then, having been moved to Hull, he had damaged his flat by fire.

He was then detained under the Mental Health Act for two months before being moved to Bradford in April last year. By June 23, he had felt isolated and damaged his flat by fire.

“You don’t give thought to the risks to others from your actions,” Judge Burn said.

He told Ftwi that where he went after serving his sentence was a matter for the Immi-gration Service.

• A ‘RING and bring’ cocaine and cannabis supplier whose Keighley-based business stretched from Shipley to Skipton was jailed for two years and nine months.

Mahboob Aslam had £5,180 in cash seized from his home when the police raided it on October 24 last year. A BMW parked outside the property contained 40 packages of cannabis and an incrimi-nating phone was also found, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Aslam, 37, of Prior Street, Keighley, at first denied any knowledge of the phone and claimed he wasn’t involved in drug dealing.

He went on to plead guilty to being concerned in the supply of cocaine, between June 26 last year and October 24.

Aslam also admitted possession of cannabis with intent to supply it and possession of the seized cash as criminal property. Prosecutor Giles Bridge said Aslam ran a ‘ring and bring’ dealer line from an unregis-tered pay-as-you-go phone. He sent out bulk messages advertising the supply of cocaine in three different quantities, saying it was available ‘until late.’ Customers could pay by bank transfer into his account and an extra £10 was charged to deliver to Shipley.

Mr Bridge said messages showed that the business dealt with users in Skipton as well.

On October 24, Aslam was in a Skoda in Bradford when a suspected drugs sale took place from the vehicle. Later that day he was arrested in Keighley town centre.

A wrap of cocaine was found in the police vehicle that transported him following his ar-rest.

Andrew Stranex said in mitigation that Aslam was respected and liked by those who knew him. His letter to the court was open and honest and there were references that spoke well of him. He had a wife and two young children and his concern was for them.

Aslam asked the court to consider an alternative to immediate custody given the amount of time he had spent in prison on remand and then on a qualifying curfew.

Mr Stranex said the ‘ring and bring’ method of drugs supply was well established in the Bradford area. Aslam was naïve enough to give out his own bank account details so he was always going to be caught.

Judge Colin Burn said Aslam’s involvement in drugs trafficking was brought about by his heavy cannabis use. He was trying to pay back money he owed for that.

He was playing a significant role in the operation, transferring money from one account to another and a large amount of cash was found at his home address when it was searched.