JAILED: Thug stabbed pair in Wolverhampton city centre while out on licence
An attacker who knifed two men while on licence for another stabbing has been jailed for 14 years.
Burell Moore was selling drugs near The Planet Nightclub in Wolverhampton city centre’s Westbury Street when he got involved in a row, a judge was told.
Thomas Palmer, aged 22, and 25-year-old David Allen later said they had left the club for a short time to have a cigarette when they encountered him during the early hours of September 29 last year.
There was some sort of dispute – the exact cause of which remains unclear – during which Moore, also 22, and under the influence of drugs, pulled out a blade and repeatedly plunged it into both men, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
Mr Palmer was stabbed five times, twice to the neck, twice to the body and once to his elbow.
He was detained in hospital for seven days during which he underwent emergency surgery.
Mr Allen suffered three wounds, two to the back and a laceration to his left forearm, as he battled to stop the attack. He needed two days of treatment before being discharged from hospital.
Moore was staying at a hostel in Tettenhall Road, Wolverhampton, following his release from a jail sentence imposed for a similar incident during which he repeatedly knifed a man who refused a demand to give him his mobile phone during a robbery.
The defendant, aged 19 at the time, slashed the victim and stabbed him in the abdomen during the confrontation at Worcester Street in Wolverhampton city centre before escaping with the phone. He was jailed for the robbery.
Moore, who defended himself, said of his latest knife attack: “I apologise for what happened. I only did this to fund my stay at the hostel. It is hard to live on Jobseekers Allowance after your release from prison. I thought it was a way to stay afloat. I don’t want to say any more.”
He had denied wounding with intent and possession of a knife but was convicted after a trial and had been remanded in custody pending a pre-sentence report from the probation service, which concluded: “It is clear he has not learned the lesson that carrying a knife and using it can cause serious injury and even death.”
Moore was jailed for 14 years and will have to serve at least two-thirds of this term before the Parole Board can consider his release.
Once freed he will be under supervision for five years longer than normal.
Judge Nicholas Webb told him: “You have displayed an emerging pattern of increasing violence with the use of a knife. You are fortunate nobody was killed.”
