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Taxi driver attacker's sentence slashed
Friday, 2.15pm - A DAD who only learned he had drunkenly robbed, beaten and kidnapped a 60-year-old female taxi driver when he read about it in the Journal today had his 10-year jail term slashed by three years.
Friday, 2.15pm - A DAD who only learned he had drunkenly robbed, beaten and kidnapped a 60-year-old female taxi driver when he read about it in the Journal today had his 10-year jail term slashed by three years.Latvian national, Arvis Dikis, 27, of Grantley Street, Grantham, calmly walked into a police station with a copy of the Journal article and two stolen mobile phones and handed himself in following the incident.
At Lincoln Crown Court last October, he admitted robbery, kidnap and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and was handed the tough 10-year sentence.
But he appealed, and today, in a hearing at the Criminal Appeal Court in London, won a three-year reduction in his term from Lady Justice Hallett, Mr Justice Openshaw and Mr Justice Blair.
Mr Justice Openshaw said the fact that Dikis had handed himself in when he was not even a suspect meant that the 10-year term was too long.
Dikis' victim, 60-year-old taxi driver, Dorothy Gunnett, picked him up near Grantham Market Place in the early hours of October 13 of last year.
He asked to be taken to Melton Mowbray, but, on arrival, instead of paying the 39 fare, launched a ferocious assault on the terrified Mrs Gunnett.
He hit her over the head with a bottle, causing a cut which needed six stitches, and pushed her into the back seat of her taxi before driving off in the direction of Nottingham.
He pulled into a quiet country lane and demanded that she hand over her takings and a mobile phone, before driving off again and abandoning her and the car in the Wollaton area of Nottingham. He took another phone before he left.
Mrs Gunnett raised the alarm by banging on doors near where she was dumped, but, by the time police arrived, Dikis was long gone.
With no information pointing to a likely suspect, the chances of catching Mrs Gunnett's kidnapper were slim - until Dikis read about it in the Journal.
On the night of the attack, he had argued with his wife and got drunk, and had no recollection of what he had done.
But, fearing he may be the attacker due to the presence of two strange mobile phones in his possession the morning after the incident, he took the newspaper and went to police.
Sentencing him, the Crown Court judge, Judge Michael Heath, said it had been a "serious attack" on a vulnerable person performing a public service, and therefore needed a tough sentence.
But today, lawyers representing the Latvian, whose wife moved back to the east European country with his children after the arrest, argued that 10 years was too high.
Taking into account a one-third reduction which he must have received for his prompt pleas of guilty, it meant the judge must have considered the offences worthy of a 15-year term if he had contested a trial.
Allowing the appeal, Mr Justice Openshaw said the fact that he had given himself up to police when he was not even "on the radar" meant he deserved a hefty reduction in his sentence.
"Those who give themselves up in such circumstances deserve considerable credit," he said. "Accordingly, we quash the sentence of 10 years and substitute a sentence of seven years."
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