Bat attack, justice?

Some time ago I wrote a post concerning a vicious attack a friend of mine suffered. His ankle was broken and he received several blows to the head from a baseball bat in the attack. Originally, I said he was walking home drunk from the pub, when in fact he was not drunk and had merely left the pub after a single drink. He and his mate had been to band practice and were in good spirits as they’d just got news of a recording contract.

The ankle was in plaster for a long time, but he has full use restored and is finishing physio soon, hopefully to be able to play footy again after further strengthening.

The trial had to be postponed due to a technicality so in the end he and his mate have had to give evidence twice. The defendant with the bat pleaded guilty while the other pleaded not guilty, hence the need for the trip to court.

This second defendant was acquitted of all charges. It seems that the CPS charged him with too serious an offence for the actual crime, meaning that they had to prove he intended to cause serious damage to my mate. This was not possible as although he broke my mates ankle it’s hard to show that was his intent.

So that seems to be that. My mate is still suffering the after effects of the attack, one attacker is free while the other is awaiting sentence. My mate did get £5000 compensation which is better than nothing, but there are emotional scars.

Clearly, the CPS were at fault here. Surely the bloke who got off would’ve been convicted if charged with a lesser offence! He did, after all make an unprovoked attack on a complete stranger walking home with a friend. Hopefully, the ‘batter’ will get a commensurate sentence.

Baseball Bat Attack

I hope this post isn’t taken as bad taste, it certainly isn’t intended to take advantage of a terrible event, it’s simply an account of what happened to the best of my knowledge at this time, which has some implications in terms of martial arts training.

I’ve just got back from visiting my brother and his family in London to find an unwelcome message on Facebook. A very close friend has been attacked by thugs, outside his home. The thugs were, actually neighbours from three doors down. Initially there was an altercation, my mate squared up to them, was exchanging blows with one while the other grabbed the baseball bat, from his house and proceeded to beat my friend.

In the melee my friend received a badly broken ankle (two bones and torn ligament). So he was unable to get away, the thugs continued to beat him round the head and clearly could’ve killed him. They were locked up for the weekend and went to court this morning. The Police want bail refused due to the seriousness of the crime, hopefully it will be.

My mate will be operated on tonight or tomorrow and will have pins, screws and allsorts inserted, and then he’ll be in plaster for eight weeks. A further op to remove the screws will precede a long slow rehab. Probably six months to recovery. He was lucky that the he survived without suffering serious head injury or even death, the hospital staff literally glued his head back together.

Apparently, he is in reasonable spirits and hopes to be out of hospital next week. Apart from being a bit of a shocker, to say the least, it highlights a couple of things in terms of self-protection.

1. Fate – if he had arrived one minute earlier, he would’ve had his key in the door and not bumped into the Chavs. A clear, wrong place wrong time scenario.
2. Drunkenness – he was very drunk and cannot remember much about the beating, possibly also due to the stress. He has done martial arts training but not for a while, he is fit, plays a lot of footy, but he wasn’t capable of protecting himself due to the alcohol.
3. Mistakes – he made the error of squaring up to his attackers. Easy to say in retrospect, but it flies in the face of self-protection advice. If he was going to fight them he really needed to pre-empt, take the one out, etc.,etc. But possibly a result of too much sparring, where protocol is different to that on the street, he squared up rather than hitting first.

Self-protection theory is all very easy to write but in the heat of the moment, drunk and with luck certainly against you mistakes can happen; the reality can be so far removed from theory.