Convicted armed robber brandished Stanley knife weeks after release from ten year jail term - The Leamington Observer

Convicted armed robber brandished Stanley knife weeks after release from ten year jail term

Leamington Editorial 14th Mar, 2020 Updated: 16th Mar, 2020   0

A CONVICTED armed robber who pulled out a Stanley knife during an argument in the street just six weeks after being released from a ten-year sentence is back behind bars.

Christopher Boyd had previously pleaded not guilty at Warwick Crown Court to a charge of making a threat with a knife.

But at a further hearing a plea of guilty to an alternative offence of possessing a bladed article in a public place was accepted by the prosecution.

The 37-year-old, of no fixed address, was jailed for 18 months.




Prosecutor Dean Easthope said on a Sunday in January a man was at a multi-storey car park in Leamington’s Bedford Street when he bumped into Boyd, who he knew.

Boyd, who he had previously had issues, produced a Stanley knife with the blade open and visible.


There was an argument before the victim ran off before calling police.

Officers found Boyd out of breath, and he told them he had ‘had a row with some blokes’ who had slagged him off the previous week.

The officers searched the area in the direction they had seen Boyd coming from, and found the knife.

Tariq Shakoor, defending, said: “Whatever the history between these two, the defendant didn’t go out looking for him. They saw each-other by chance. It could have escalated, but didn’t. Thankfully the defendant ran away from any possible confrontation on this occasion.”

Of Boyd’s possession of the knife, he added that he said he had been using it while fitting a friend’s bathroom flooring that day, but accepts he should not still have had it on him.

Judge Peter Cooke observed Boyd had a “worrying antecedent history” and in 2009 was jailed for ten years for aggravated burglary and robbery.

Sentencing Boyd, Judge Cooke told him: “Whatever the reason for you having the knife, you chose when you met a man with whom you had a history of confrontation to produce it from your pocket and show him.

“You could not have known what his reaction would be. Fortunately when you took to your heels he did the proper thing and called the police.”

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