"Screwdriver held to man's neck over fake sex offender claims"

[dutchman]

The victim broke his kneecap jumping from a first-floor window to escape his attackers



A young man was punched repeatedly and told he would be stabbed with a screwdriver at the hands of two men who suspected he was a sex offender.

Having been the subject of the "appalling attack" for around half an hour, the victim managed to make a run for it and, as he was so terrified, he jumped out of a first-floor window.

He fractured his kneecap doing so and managed to crawl away to get help, despite one final effort by his attackers to drag him back inside.

The victim needed metal pins placing in his shattered knee and still doesn't have full movement in the joint nine months after the attack.

And now one of his tormentors, Brian Burke, has been jailed after pleading guilty at Warwick Crown Court to inflicting grievous bodily harm.

Burke, 20, of St Nicholas Street, Radford, at the time, was sentenced to two years in prison.

When Burke was arrested, he told police: “I did bang him out. The guy’s a nonce. When I get out I’ll bang him out again."

Mr Forrest said the other man was also arrested, but was committed under the Mental Health Act and has not been charged.

Jailing Burke, Judge Barry Berlin told him: “You and another man saw him in Coventry city centre, and you went to your flat and drank alcohol.

“You saw a message and became angry, and you both started asking him questions, and if he did not answer in a way you liked, you gratuitously punched him, both of you.

“You then took up a screwdriver and went towards him, holding it to his throat.

“In terror, he fought his way past you to the window and he jumped from the window ledge and fractured his kneecap in doing so. The injury could well be a permanent one.

“There must be an immediate sentence for this appalling attack. This was a particularly serious, gratuitous and prolonged attack which led to what I believe may be permanent damage to the victim’s knee, and there is an element of vigilantism.”