A VIOLENT young man who carried out a number of totally unprovoked attacks, breaking one victim’s cheekbone in four places and another one’s jaw has been jailed for a total of six years.
The last of vicious Oliver McKinney’s attacks had come after a judge at Warwick Crown Court had deferred sentence on him in March for two earlier incidents.
Telling him she had ‘a sentence of 46 months in mind’ for offences of inflicting grievous bodily harm, common assault and two attempted robberies, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano had pleaded with him to take the chance and stay out of trouble.
But at the resumed hearing, she heard that just two weeks went by before 20-year-old McKinney, of Jago Green, Snitterfield Lane, Snitterfield, assaulted a Leamington night club manager.
Then in July he carried out a further attack, breaking another young man’s jaw with a single punch, telling some who asked him why he had done it: “Because I can.”
Judge de Bertodano imposed a 16-month sentence for his first grievous bodily harm offence, with a consecutive two-and-a-half years for the two attempted robberies – and a further 26-month consecutive term for his final grievous bodily harm offence.
Prosecutor Richard Franck said McKinney had attacked a university student in Stratford in September last year. It resulted in
the student having to undergo an operation to repair his cheekbone with metal plates. It has left him with ‘a slight deformity’ to his face.
Then on Christmas Eve McKinney savagely attacked a 64-year-old man on the doorstep of his Stratford home during an attempted robbery. He knocked him to the floor and kicked him to the head and body. He also smashed his glasses, and those of his 67 year-old partner when she opened the door.
And in this year, just two weeks after the judge had given him a chance by deferring his sentence, McKinney punched the operations manager at Smack night club in Leamington during a clash over him taking a bottle of beer out into the street.
He was convicted of that assault after a trial in the magistrates’ court in June and, despite the deferred sentence, the magistrates dealt with him by imposing a 12-month community order.
Then in July 7, after an evening out, broke a man’s jaw when he kneed him to the face. As a result of his injury, the man also had to have a metal plate inserted to repair the damage.
Graeme Simpson, defending, said: “In every respect other than this spree of violent offending, he is a decent person.”
Mr Simpson said McKinney had been diagnosed and medicated for ADHD when he was seven, and then diagnosed as autistic and then as suffering from depression when he was 14.
McKinney, who works in his father’s business, struggled to cope with his parents separation when he was 16, and when he was 18 he took the decision not to take his medication.
At the same time, he started going out drinking at weekends, which led to the first incident, after which he began drinking more heavily and also taking cocaine at weekends.
Jailing McKinney, Judge de Bertodano told him: “After your guilty pleas you came in front of me, and I took an exceptional course.
“What I said to you was that if you managed to stay away from offending, I would deal with you by way of a custodial sentence that was not immediate.
“But you breached the terms of the deferral by committing an assault.”
