NORTHAMPTON: Teen jailed for serious assault on taxi driver

Teen jailed for serious assault on taxi driver


A teenage yob has been detained for 21 months for his part in a drunken gang's attack on a taxi driver which saw youths as young as 14 help beat the victim unconscious.
Nathan Kightley, aged 18, of Queen Eleanor Road, Far Cotton, admitted punching a taxi driver in the face at the Tesco store in East Hunsbury on November 24 last year after the taxi driver claimed the teenager had taken the vehicle's keys.

Kightley had reached into the taxi to stop the car because he wanted to speak to a group of girl passengers.

Other youths then took items including the driver's wallet, phone and satellite navigation system from the vehicle's glove box.

The driver, who was working for Bounds Taxis of Bradshaw Street, pursued Kightley but was hit over the head with a bottle, punched and then kicked several times by other teenagers while he was on the ground.

He lost consciousness and was later taken to Northampton General Hospital.

Kightley and three other defendants, 18-year-old Nathan Evans, of Friars Crescent, Ross McCreadie of Abbey Road and Steven Bishop, both now aged 15, admitted actual bodily harm at Northampton Crown Court yesterday.

The court heard all four teenagers were drunk at the time of the attack and that alcohol had been a major cause of the aggression.

But Judge Richard Bray said he believed the type of assault could not be tolerated and the taxi driver now feared working at night.

He said: "This was a serious attack on a taxi driver at night when he was only trying to do his job.

"It has to be said that attacks of this type are all too frequent."

To Kightley, he said: "You started the assault by stopping the taxi and punching the taxi driver
and all the trouble happened after that.

"The matter was aggravated by the fact you were on double bail for other offences at the time.

"You were given bail again which you should never have been.

"These courts have a duty to protect taxi drivers from attack," he added.

Judge Bray said the attack was serious enough to grant the Chronicle & Echo's request to lift reporting restrictions so McCreadie and Bishop could be named.

He added the pair's parents were right to feel responsibility for the attack because they had allowed them to drink to excess and ordered them to pay the taxi driver £500 each in compensation.

He also handed Bishop a supervision order with an anger management course.

Evans was ordered to be detained for 12 months and Kightley was given 21 months for the attack and found guilty of the theft of the keys, for which he was handed a further three months.

http://www.northantset.co.uk/northampton-chronicle-and-echo/Teen-jailed-for-serious-assault.3368097.jp