A boy who stabbed a man five years his senior was branded ‘feral’ by the judge who sent him down for a dozen years.

The now 17-year-old was part of a gang of youths who attacked victim Danils Bogdancevs, then 21, in broad daylight in People’s Park, Banbury, on a sunny Saturday last June.

The boy, who cannot be named after Judge Michael Gledhill KC refused to lift reporting restrictions protecting his identity, was the only one of three youths on trial last month to be found guilty of attempted murder. 

READ MORE: Live updates as stabber jailed for attempted murder

Sentencing the ponytailed stabber for 12 years at Oxford Crown Court this afternoon (Friday, May 12), the judge said: "You have absolutely no regard to the law whether it be cannabis, carrying knives or using violence. You believe you were above the law and could behave exactly as you wanted to. 

"Your life was completely out of control on the day of the stabbing and your behaviour can rightly be described as feral."

He described the assault on Mr Bogdancevs as a 'deliberate, sustained, cold-blooded, vicious attempt to kill him'. 

"Despite your best efforts, Danils did not die. He survived because of the prompt action of a person in the park who had seen what happened. She was trained in first aid and she did not hesitate to come to his aid. She kept him alive until the police and medical help arrived,” the judge said. 

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The defendant, who was seated in the dock flanked by a specialist custody officer, was told he had shown ‘not a jot of remorse’ during the trial. 

Judge Gledhill said: "You still deny that you stabbed him. You say [in the pre-sentence report] you've been set up by your co-defendants in order to save their own skins." 

During the trial, jurors were told that Mr Bogdancevs had been punched, kicked, stamped on and stabbed in what prosecutor Mark Trafford KC said was a ‘brutal and vicious’ attack on June 11 last year.

The group assault came after co-defendants ‘X’ and ‘Y’ – both youths who cannot be named for legal reasons – chased him around the park.

Video footage played to the jury showed X, armed with a stick and brick, chasing the older man around the park.

‘Ringleader’ Boy X was said to have told the older man: “I’m going to f*** you up, mate. I’m going to f*** you up right now.”

The boy allegedly used a mobile phone to summon reinforcements. Z appeared in the park after the first phase of the incident, with witnesses seeing him plunge the knife that left his victim fighting for his life with half a dozen stab wounds.

Boy Z accepted being in the park at the time but told the jury he had not been involved in the assault.

He said he had punched Mr Bogdancevs a fortnight earlier, as he explained why the victim’s blood was found on his jacket.

READ MORE UPDATES FROM 'ATTEMPTED MURDER' TRIAL

On Friday, Judge Gledhill said that whatever the truth of Z’s claims about the fracas a fortnight earlier, 'it gave you no excuse to behave as you did on the day of the stabbing'.

In mitigation, Peter Doyle KC, said of Z: “This young man from a tender age has been through the mangle of life. It started at the age of two.”

His abusive father had been in prison and he came to regard himself as the man of the house. It was supposedly in defence of his mother’s honour that he beat a middle-aged neighbour with a metal file when he was just 15-years-old. 

Mr Doyle said his client’s early experiences 'may have and probably certainly did mould this young man's character and approach to third parties'.

The boy had two younger siblings. It was out of fear that these children could be subjected to bullying and violence from others that Judge Gledhill refused an application from the Oxford Mail for the defendant to be named. Letters from the council's social services team and charity Children Heard and Seen urged the judge to keep the gagging order in place, citing the potential impact on the family.