Legal

Dappy given suspended sentence over petrol station brawl

By | Published on Monday 18 February 2013

Dappy

Dappy has been given a six month sentence, suspended for eighteen months, after being found guilty of assault and affray earlier this year. He was also ordered to do 150 hours of community service, and to pay £4500 in compensation and £2000 costs to his victims.

As previously reported, Dappy was accused of approaching two nineteen year old women, Grace Cochran and Serena Burton, at a Guildford filling station in the early hours of 28 Feb last year. When they refused a request to get into his car, he became angry and spat at them. Another man, David Jenkins, came to the women’s defence and a fight broke out.

Dappy and two of his entourage, Kieran Vassell and Kalonji Stewart, pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, and Dappy’s defence was that he had simply been trying to promote his new single when he himself was attacked. But, while a jury last month found him not guilty of common assault by spitting at the two women, he was found guilty of assault by beating and affray.

Vassell was jailed for fourteen months and ordered to pay £1500 compensation and £500 costs, while a fourth man, Alfred Miller, was sentenced to nineteen months in jail and ordered to pay £4500 compensation and £1000 costs. Stewart was found not guilty of affray.

Commenting on his decision to give Dappy a suspended sentence rather than sending him straight to jail, Judge Neil Stewart told the singer: “The report I have on you suggests you do not present overtly criminal attitudes and this offence has been a wake up call for you. Your culpability in the affray was considerably less than that of your co-defendants. The sentence I have decided on is not affected by any consideration of whether a person is well-known to the public”.



READ MORE ABOUT: | |