TEESIDE: My arrest nightmare for taking on yobs

My arrest nightmare for taking on yobs

CHARGED: Mark Fenwick
at court yesterday

A BUSINESSMAN has spoken for the first time of his horror at being arrested for assault when he took the law into his own hands after being targeted by yobs on "mischief night".

Mark Fenwick took to the streets with a neighbour to round up trouble-makers after a slab of paving concrete was hurled through a window at his home by a gang of about 30 yobs.

The father-of-three, who runs a building firm, helped catch three teenagers and frog-marched them to a police van - but then found himself arrested.

He told a jury at Teesside Crown Court yesterday that, at the time, one of the police officers thanked him and said to the youths: "You deserve everything you get, you little gets."

Mr Fenwick, 34, said he left the scene with neighbour David Lawson, 38, feeling as though he had performed an admirable act of public duty by preventing further damage to homes.

He spent the next month in touch with the police to see if any of the suspects had been charged, but was astonished when officers said they had decided to arrest him instead.

"We sent emails asking if they had made any progress finding out who had done it or if the boys had coughed up," Mr Fenwick told the jury.

"We just got no reply.

"It was about a month later when they actually came knocking on the door.

"They said 'Can we come in, we've got something we would like to talk about.'

"I thought it was about what had happened, but they said they had had an allegation I had assaulted the lads I handed over."

Asked by his lawyer, Robert Mochrie, how he felt about the incident now - almost a year on - and on trial, Mr Fenwick said: "I still feel that I did the right thing on the evening.

"I feel that I did what any normal person in my position would have done."

Under cross-examination by Anthony Moore, prosecuting, Mr Fenwick disputed "going over the top" when he apprehended the youths he believed had damaged his home.

Mr Fenwick, who denies two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, said: "I believe to this day that I did everything right. I never overstepped the mark in anything I did."

Mr Fenwick's ordeal began last year on the evening of October 30 - known as "mischief night" - when gangs of youths run amok in neighbourhoods.

He told the jury he had returned from work to his home in Chervil, Coulby Newham, when the slab crashed through a roof window.

Mr Fenwick said he went outside to see what had happened, and was confronted by a gang of about 30 youths armed with sticks, bricks and stones.

He told the court that he was pelted with missiles, while one member of the group shouted: "Come on, he's on his own. Let's give him a f***ing kicking."

Mr Fenwick said he "took check of what was happening" and went back inside, told his wife to call the police, and started to follow the gang in his car once they backed away.

Soon afterwards, he said he saw them smashing a window at the nearby home of Mr Lawson, and pelting another property, so the two of them gave chase across some fields.

The two men caught three boys - all of whom Mr Fenwick is convinced were in the original gang - and planned to hold them at Mr Lawson's home until the police arrived.

But as they walked back to the estate, a police van passed, so the neighbours handed the teenagers to the police, and they were taken to the station. Once they were there, however, one of the youths,

aged 13, claimed he had been strangled and hit with a stick.

The other, a 15-year-old, said he had been punched after Mr Fenwick rugby-tackled him to the ground.

Seventeen-stone Mr Fenwick was accused by Mr Moore of rounding up any young people he could find in the neighbourhood, regardless of whether they were the ones who had attacked his home.

The barrister asked: "Is it the truth that you were angry that night and just wanted to make sure that somebody was caught?" Mr Fenwick replied: "That's not the case at all. I believe the people responsible were the people I handed over to the police.

"Just blaming somebody is not my way. I wanted the people who were responsible, and I believe they were the ones I handed over to the police."

Mr Fenwick admitted going out armed with a stick because he feared for his safety, but said he threw it away when the gang split up and they were able to catch individual suspects. He said: "I was apprehensive about my own safety at the time. My intention with the stick was if I needed to get away while I was being attacked, it would give me the chance to do that.

"When you are dealing with such a large number of yobs, you don't know what they are capable of, so I was apprehensive about what I was walking into.

"You hear so many horror stories on the news that you have these thoughts in your mind when all this is going on.

"If I had got hurt or beaten up to such an extent, I have got a wife and three young sons at home I have to look after." The trial continues.

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