Pair given community service for unprovoked attack outside pub

Friday 22 April 2022

Two 20-year-olds have been given community service for kicking and punching a man at Cheapside in an unprovoked attack.

Tyler Kennedy and Siobhan White were sentenced to 230 and 200 hours respectively of community service in the Royal Court on Thursday.

Both were jointly sentenced for committing the grave and criminal assault on 31 May last year. 

Kennedy was also sentenced for an affray near Le Frégate Café on 16 May 2020 and a common assault on a doorman at St James’s Wine Bar on 31 July 2020.

Giving the facts of the grave and criminal assault, Crown Advocate Chris Baglin said that the victim had been drinking in the Old England Pub, where White and Kennedy were also drinking with a group of friends.

“The victim and the group ended up sitting next to each other and there was interaction between the victim and the group including White and Kennedy and verbal exchanges, including insults, went between the parties,” said Advocate Baglin.

“At one point in the evening the victim went outside to have a cigarette and saw one of the girls had left a black handbag outside and he threw it on the floor, causing some of the contents to spill out, because he was upset about how the group had been behaving towards him. 

“He realised he should not have done this and picked the bag back up and left in on a chair.

“The victim then left the pub and was followed by the group who were accusing him of stealing one of the group’s cannabis. The victim was then subject to an unprovoked assault which involved kicks and punches.”

Video footage filmed by White on her phone recorded the serious assault. It showed her pulling the victim down by his hair and aggressively swearing it him.

Kennedy then punched the victim once, which knocked him to the floor, and then White stamped on his back. The victim managed to get to his knees, at which point White kicked him in the face while shouting “Where the f*ck is our weed?”

At this stage, Kennedy was on his knees in front of the victim and shouted at White to stop her assault.

Advocate Baglin said: “The Crown notes that throughout the entirety of the grave and criminal assault the victim either has his hands at his sides or in his pocket and offer no violence or aggression at any stage.”

White also grabbed and smashed the victim’s phone. He went to hospital after the attack and was admitted overnight. He had abrasions on his left knee and forearm and bruising above and below his left eye.

He also told the examining doctor that he suffered from epilepsy caused by a serious brain injury sustained in an accident when he was 17.

Defending Kennedy, Advocate Francesca Pinel said he had a lesser role in the grave and criminal assault and had not only told White to stop but also helped the victim afterwards.

Both Advocate Pinel and Advocate James Bell, who was defending White, stressed the defendants’ difficult upbringing, their mental health problems, their early guilty pleas and the length of time it had taken for the cases to come to court. 

Deputy Bailiff Robert MacRae was sitting with Jurats Jane Ronge and Kim Averty.