Bottle thug left Leeds reveller needing brain surgery after early-hours attack
He struck him in Leeds city centre after night out
A thug who lashed out at a man with a beer bottle leaving him needing brain surgery has been spared immediate custody, but was warned he came “within a hair’s breadth”.
Keino Small attacked the victim in Leeds city centre before fleeing in a car.
He appeared at Leeds Crown Court this afternoon where he admitted a charge of Section 20 GBH.
The court heard that the victim and his friends had driven from Sheffield to Leeds for a night out on August 31.
Parking on Sovereign Square, they returned at 5.30am when they came across 24-year-old Small and another man in the Swinegate area stood next to a car.
Words were exchanged before Small took a beer bottle from the car, approached the man and hit him once over the head.
The victim suffered a cut to the head, a fractured skull and a bleed to his brain. He spent nine days in hospital and required surgery to drain the blood from the right side of the brain.
In a victim impact statement, the man said he still suffers headaches, has a scar and said that his confidence has been “stripped away”.
Small was later identified from CCTV and following his arrest, clothes matching those worn from that night were recovered from his car which were also covered in blood.
He then refused to answer police questions.
Small, of Destiny Road, Birmingham, has two previous convictions for seven offences, including possessing a bladed article.
Mitigating Anthony Sugare said Small had travelled from the Midlands for the Leeds West Indian Carnival event in Chapeltown and had been drinking.
He said: “He accepts he had a beer bottle in his hand and struck him with it. He has to accept the consequences of that particular action.”
The court heard that Small has ADHD and autism.
Judge Simon Phillips KC told Small: “It was an unprovoked attack.
“It was relatively short lived but the implications were severe and grave.
“There’s a strong argument for sending you to prison but I will drawn back from that.”
He referred to Small’s neurodivergence and gave him a 24 months’ custody, suspended for 24 months.
He ordered he complete a probation requirement and a six-month GPS curfew order.
He told him: “You have come within a hair’s breadth [of going to prison].”