An asylum seeker who waved a kitchen knife at people on a crowded street in Leicester, England, chased them, and spat at them while foaming at the mouth has been jailed for 13 months.
Samuel Makula, 28, of De Montfort Mews in Leicester city center, was sentenced Friday at Leicester Crown Court after pleading guilty to possessing a blade in public and making threats with a blade against several people. He also caused criminal damage to a police cell, Leicestershire Live reported.
The incident happened at about 9:30 PM on Wednesday, September 2, on Church Gate, a busy stretch of the city center. Prosecutor Lucky Thandi said Makula approached people with a kitchen knife, waved it at them, chased those who ran, spat at them, and made derogatory remarks about Somali people and Muslims. The episode lasted several minutes. “The threats were several and it was a busy area with a fair amount of footfall,” she told the court.
When Leicestershire Police officers arrived, he dropped the knife and ran. Passers-by grabbed him and pulled him to the ground.
Officers said his pupils were dilated, his eyes were glazed, and his speech was slurred. He was foaming at the mouth and extremely paranoid, the court heard. The defense said he had been dumped by his girlfriend, then drank and took drugs a stranger offered him.
In custody, he tried to defecate on the floor of the custody suite, spat and urinated in his cell, and spat on an officer’s sleeve. After sobering up, he denied everything, saying he could not remember. His lawyer, Bethan Chichester, later said he admitted it and was “disgusted and ashamed.”
The judge, Recorder David Allan, sentenced him to 13 months and said a breakup was “not an excuse to go into the city centre and wave a knife around at members of the public, chasing a number of people and raising a knife.” Even a small knife, he said, “can cause a fatal injury.” He said Makula is likely to be deported after serving a third of the sentence, although deportation orders are often not carried out in Britain.
