Jail for Faringdon man after 'bike wheel debt' machete attack

Todd Kent, 55, attacked victim Danny Barron with the machete or billhook in Faringdon on June 8 – having returned to his flat to retrieve the blade after walking past his supposed debtor.

Mr Barron said Kent first pushed the point of the blade towards his chest, dislodging a set of house keys he was wearing on a ‘quick release’ buckle lanyard around his neck.

As the victim crouched down to pick up the keys, he felt a ‘sharp pain’ on the back of his head. He felt blood and realised he had been struck with the blade.

Kent walked away, allegedly shouting a threat to cut the man’s ‘f***ing head off’.

CCTV footage from a neighbour’s flat showed the defendant returning to his home with what prosecution and defence lawyers respectively described as the machete or billhook.

The same camera caught him leaving the property again a few minutes later with a bulky object wrapped in a plastic bag. He returned to his front door 19 seconds later without the package in his hands.

The machete was later found in a nearby electricity box.

Mr Barron suffered a ‘gaping’ wound to the back of his head. Paramedics called to the home of the victim’s friend fixed the wound using ‘steristrips’.

Kent, of The Lees, Faringdon, accepted possession of the blade but denied wounding Mr Barron with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm.

At the end of a two day trial this week, jurors at Oxford Crown Court convicted him of the serious offence.

And on Friday, he was jailed for four years and nine months for the wounding offence – with a nine month sentence on the bladed article charge ordered to run concurrently, or alongside, the longer jail term.

Recorder John Bate-Williams noted that the background to the attack was a ‘festering gripe’ over what must have been a relatively low-level debt Kent felt was owed to him by Mr Barron for a ‘bicycle wheel’.

“This was a very nasty, completely unprovoked attack on a man who was at the time of your sudden blow unable to defend himself,” the judge said.

“In my judgement, this was a cowardly attack and it is very fortunate the injury you inflicted was not more serious or even fatal.”

The court heard Kent had previous convictions dating back to the 1990s and 2000s for affray and wounding. He had been out of trouble for more than a decade.

Mitigating, Emma Hornby told the judge that a prison sentence would result in her client losing his accommodation and the pet dog that had given him ‘companionship and a real reason to keep going’. He would also miss the birth of his grandchild next spring.

Since his remand into custody in the summer he had gained work as a painter on the prison wing.