A UK judge jailed a 17-year-old for violently attacking a gay man with a machete and cutting his stomach open.
Her Honour Judge Adrienne Lucking sentenced Ibraima Touray-Drammeh, 17, to 10 years and eight months in prison. He was found guilty of wounding with intent at Northampton Crown Court on Thursday (23 May).
of the trial detailed Drammeh’s attack on Nathan Hale, including how Drammeh abused him before the August attack in St. Katherine’s Gardens.
After Drammeh slashed Hale’s stomach, with a machete bought only two days earlier, he allegedly knocked Hale’s phone from his hand so he couldn’t call for help.
Lucking described the crime to the court.
‘You walked through the town centre with a barely-concealed machete,’ she said. ‘You slashed him in the chest, in broad daylight, in public.’
A friend of Drammah, Perry Bentley, 23, was also jailed for 20 months after he reportedly witnessed the attack and did nothing about it.
Lucking brought this up in her comments, and also detailed the excruciating details of how Hale watched his own intestines ‘spill out’.
‘You both ran from this badly injured man. He fell down bleeding, and saw his own intestines fall through his abdomen,’ she continued.
‘This offence is so serious it can only be met with an immediate custodial sentence and I must impose an extended sentence in order to protect the public.’
Hale survived the attack thanks to immediate help from authorities who transported him to a hospital where he was placed in a medically-induced coma.
‘When I first saw my scars in hospital I cried for over an hour at what these men had done to me,’ he said during the trial.
‘I have frequent flashbacks. I have nightmares of a man in my room at night.’
Hale described himself as a ‘shadow of my former self’.
He continued: ‘I used to be outgoing and confident but I find going out just makes me anxious. I don’t think I will ever be the same.’
