A woman suffered a slash to her forehead after a shoplifter kicked a shop door into her face. The woman had been trying to lock the man inside the shop when he carried out the assault.
Olan Easingwood had walked into the D&R store in King Richards Road, central Leicester, on Friday, November 1 with another man who he was instructing to put detergents into a bag. The victim, a shop worker at the store, recongised the pair from a shoplifting incident two days earlier and went to instruct the young men to put the items back.
She called the police and went to lock the door, but as she did this, 18-year-old Easingwood kicked the shop door and it swung into her face. The assault left the woman with a bleeding gash on her forehead.
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Easingwood was before Leicester Magistrates’ Court on Friday (January 3) after being charged with a string of offences including assault and 10 thefts from shops between October last year and Thursday, January 2. Court heard Easingwood was a Class A drug user who used crack cocaine and lived under a bridge as he was estranged from his parents.
The 10 shop thefts saw £1,377 worth of goods taken from a number of stores including D&R as well as the Iceland Food Warehouse in St George’s Retail Park. Easingwood also targeted the Shell Service Station in Narborough Road, One Stop in Grassmere Street near Leicester Royal Infirmary and the Savers store in Narborough Road.
In one of the One Stop thefts, Easingwood was one of a gang of five shoplifters who went into the store and filled bags with confectionary worth more than £380 before fleeing. In the Iceland incident, on Thursday, January 2, he and another man stuffed their clothes with items before walking out without paying.
Easingwood appeared at Leicester Magistrates Court
(Image: Joe Giddens/PA Wire)
When the store manager and another member of staff tried to stop Easingwood he threatened to throw his hot cup of coffee over them. He was arrested and charged with two counts of common assault, as well as shoplifting, and appeared in court from custody on Friday.
Easingwood pleaded guilty to all 10 shoplifting offences, the two Iceland common assaults and the battery against the D&R shop worker who suffered the head injury. Her statement was read to the court, in which she said: “I decided to lock them inside. I put the key in the door and the white man kicked the door and forced it back to my face. I had an injury to my forehead that was bleeding. I felt sick and nearly fainted.”
The victim was taken to hospital and the gash was glued up. In her statement, written two weeks after the incident, she said she had been feeling unwell and in pain since the injury. She said: “He clearly didn’t care about me and just wanted to steal as much as he could.”
Prosecutor Peter Bettany told the court Easingwood had a previous conviction from August last year, when he was given a conditional discharge for assaulting an emergency worker. Duncan Jefferson, representing Easingwood, said that after his client became homeless some older homeless men gave him crack cocaine, got him addicted and then forced him to go out shoplifting to pay them for the drugs.
He said: “The catalyst is that he’s been homeless and he doesn’t have any benefits because he has no ID. He was lured into trying crack cocaine and they got him addicted to that and then they told him he owned some money and he had to pay off the debt, or else.
“He had been threatened with a zombie knife and told that if he didn’t steal from those shops something was going to befall him. Clearly the drugs are the main issue.”
However, the chair of the bench, Andrew Compton, said the magistrates did not accept that Easingwood was being coerced. He told Easingwood: “We’re not convinced that was the driving factor in your offending.
“There are a number of aggravating factors here – you took part in a group activity and there were threats of violence as well as actual violence.”
Easingwood was sentenced to eight months in youth custody, suspended for 18 months. He was ordered to spend 15 days on Probation Service programmes and take part in a six-month drug rehab programme.
Instead of making Easingwood pay the £187 victim surcharge, they ordered him to pay that amount to One Stop in Grassmere Street, where most of the shop thefts took place.