A TEENAGER has avoided a prison sentence after “slashing wildly” at another person with a kitchen knife during a fight at Basildon’s Eastgate shopping centre.
But a judge told 18-year-old Ronnie Keeble, of Malgraves, that he must get his act together if he wants to make something of himself.
“You can’t just flop around, hanging out at the Eastgate centre,” said Judge Samantha Cohen. “It’s ridiculous. You’ve got to find something positive to do with your life.”
Southend Crown Court heard how the teen was arrested after an off-duty police officer chased him down and apprehended him. He pleaded guilty to threatening another male with a knife.
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He had been walking through the shopping centre on September 20 with another boy when a third male recognised them and said something to them.
“You should have carried on walking, realised that nothing good was going to come out of any confrontation,” said the judge. “But you couldn’t resist going back, the pair of you, to continue the row.”
The court heard it was the third male who had brought the knife to the scene.
The boy Keeble was with managed to get hold of it. Keeble then took the knife away from him.
“It may be that you did that in part to make sure he didn’t harm himself or anyone else with it,” said Judge Cohen. “It may be in a fit of anger, because you then slashed quite wildly at the third person.”
Keeble ran off through the Eastgate with the knife before tossing it over a balcony.
“All those people who were in the shopping centre, including lots of people I noticed who had young children, would have been terrified,” the judge said.
“You threw it over a balcony and thank goodness it didn’t hit anybody.”
Prosecutor Abdul Kapadia said Keeble had previous convictions for robbery, possession of a bladed article and possessing cannabis with intent to supply.
Defence barrister Chris Martin said Keeble had a “difficult upbringing”, was learning disabled and had both Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD.
In 2023, he said, the grandmother who raised him died – a traumatic event which coincided directly with the beginning of Keeble’s offending.
Judge Cohen sentenced him to 15 months in prison, suspended for 20 months, with 150 hours of unpaid work.
“You will find that it gives you structure,” she said. “It is not optional. You have to do it even if you don’t like it, even if it’s with other people you don’t like. Do not go to do it and get into trouble because that will be dreadful. It will lead to dreadful consequences.”
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