A MAN who knocked a woman to the ground and snatched her handbag ended up suffering more serious injuries than his victim – after impaling his arm on a metal spiked fence when a good samaritan chased him.
Yet he has avoided being sent to jail.
Adrian Gent was left hanging from the spiked fence with a wounded arm before managing to make off, leaving the handbag still dangling.
But a quick-thinking motorist had followed him, despite being threatened, and managed to take a picture of Gent which led to him being identified, Warwick Crown Court heard.
Gent (44) of Villa Road, Radford, Coventry, was given a 16-month prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered to do 180 hours of unpaid work after pleading guilty to the robbery.
Prosecutor Paul Fairley said that at about 11am on June 1 this year a 64-year-old woman was walking along Foster Road in Coventry with her handbag over her shoulder when she felt a push.
She fell to the ground, suffering bruising and grazing, as Gent tugged at her bag before wrestling it from her and running off.
But Darren Faulkner happened to be passing in his car and drove after Gent as he made off, shouting to him that he had called the police.
Mr Faulkner told the court that as they turned the corner into Telfer Road, Gent raised his right arm and said: “I’ve got a blade, don’t come near me.”
The court heard that although he hurled abuse, Gent denies saying he had a blade, and Mr Faulkner confirmed: “At no time did I see a blade.”
He continued to follow him into Villa Road where Gent ‘ducked into an entry’ and scaled a gate or fence where his right arm got caught on the spikes on the top.
“He freed himself and fell down into the entry, and I could see him holding his arm.”
Mr Faulkner, who saw the bag still hanging off the fence, said he could then hear a police car, so got out of his car and showed officers a picture he had taken of the robber.
Judge Peter Cooke, who said the issue of whether Gent said he had a blade would not affect the sentence, commented: “Mr Faulkner conducted himself in an exemplary fashion. I would like to commend him for his public-spirited behaviour.”
Mr Fairley added that when Gent was interviewed, he was ‘almost immediately asking for an update on the lady’s health,’ and said he was ‘gutted’ with himself over what he had done.
Delroy Henry, defending, began: “May I make on his behalf a public apology to her. He has asked me specifically to do so.”
Mr Henry said that when Gent got impaled on the top of the metal fencing, he suffered an injury to his upper arm which needed 12 stitches.
He explained that the backdrop to the offence was a drug addiction which began after Gent was introduced to drugs socially, and for the first two years of his drug-use he had continued to hold down a job as a welder.
After losing his job, he had managed to resist resorting to criminality to support his habit, but continued to go downhill.
Without any money that day, he had gone out looking for someone to share drugs with him, without success, and was on his way home when he saw the woman and snatched her bag on the spur of the moment.
Sentencing Gent, and ordering him to take part in a rehabilitation activity, Judge Cooke told him: “I don’t for a minute belittle what you did, and I know you don’t trivialise it either.
“It is a terrifying thing for any lady to have her bag pulled off her in the street.
“She was pushed or pulled, and lost her balance and fell, and you ran off with her bag and had the encounter with the very laudable Mr Faulkner.”
