An inmate currently doing time for punching a 15-year-old girl in the face refused to come to Oxford Crown Court – saying he was ‘comfortable’ where he was.
Kayden Williams, 19, was due before a city judge on Tuesday (September 5) to be sentenced for having a mobile phone and sim card at HMP Bullingdon, where he was on remand, in February.
Now a serving prisoner at young offenders’ institution Feltham, he had refused to get on the prison transport vehicle in time for his hearing at 2pm.
“I expect you have been made aware there was a refusal to attend notice,” Judge Lamb told the prosecution and defence barristers on Tuesday afternoon.
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“I can’t remember exactly how it was expressed,” she added, summarising: “He’s comfortable there [at Feltham] and doesn’t want to be transferred.”
Judge Lamb expressed her gratitude for the notice, adding: “I regret to say they don’t provide any kind of reasonable excuse for his [failure] to attend.”
She relisted the sentencing hearing for September 18. “I’m not going to proceed in his absence, nor am I going to have it thought he gets to call the shots over how it is this hearing is conducted,” she said.
Williams is currently serving a four-and-a-half year sentence imposed at Reading Crown Court in March.
The court heard he had approached a 15-year-old girl in a park in the Berkshire town before, in the words of the prosecutor, ‘smashing her face in’.
Lawyers for Williams told the court that the teenager came from a family of 'strong women' and was 'deeply ashamed' of himself, the Oxford Mail's sister paper the Reading Chronicle reported.
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