A knifeman seen shouting racist abuse in the street hours after celebrating his 26th birthday told police he’d been stabbed over a prison dispute.
Thomas Jackson, 26, said he’d taken the two blades from his kitchen after an unnamed man grabbed him outside his flat and stabbed him.
The attack was said to have concerned ‘some trouble he’d got into when he was in HMP Bullingdon previously’.
He returned to his apartment but, scared the men might return, took two kitchen knives and ventured outside. Jackson said he had the knives in case he needed to scare the attackers away.
Prosecutor Cathy Olliver told Oxford Crown Court that neighbours of Jackson’s in Old Parr Road were disturbed in the early hours of October 25 last year by shouts.
One woman heard the knifeman shout: “I’ve got a big shank ready for any of you f******...South Africans.” He was also said to have used a racist slur.
Another man, who was out with friends, saw Jackson stab the tyres of two cars parked in the street. They walked up to the knifeman, who wandered off.
Old Parr Road, Banbury Picture: GOOGLE
A police officer tracked him down. When he was ordered to put down the blade, Jackson said he had been attacked by others and he didn’t want to put the knives down.
He locked himself in his flat, jumped out a window and was eventually caught after a foot chase through the streets of Banbury.
Mitigating, Dana Bilan said her client had had a difficult upbringing, had been ‘institutionalised from a very early age’ and suffered from multiple personality disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“This was a man who was crying out for help. He was not necessarily posing a risk to others,” she said.
HMP Bullingdon
Sentencing him to 11 months’ imprisonment, Judge Ian Pringle QC said that Jackson’s behaviour had ‘certainly caused a lot of disturbance for those who lived nearby’.
He hoped that Jackson would take on board a psychiatric report commissioned for the sentencing hearing. “Ultimately, it’s up to you, Mr Jackson. You’re 26. You can spend the rest of your adult life going in and out of prison if that is what you want, but I don’t imagine it is. You have to deal with the problems that you have,” he said.
Jackson, of Old Parr Road, Banbury, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to criminal damage and possession of a bladed article. He had 20 previous convictions.
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