Robber broke Good Samaritan's face with paving slab in terrifying Bulwell street attack

This robber attacked a Good Samaritan with a paving slab, leaving him with two fractured eye sockets and a broken face. Nottingham Crown Court heard how heavily-convicted Eamon Duffy repeatedly punched and kicked the victim as he tried to fight back, having attempted to stop him breaking into a van in Bulwell.

In a victim impact statement he told how he was left feeling “anxious, vulnerable” and that his head felt “like a washing machine”. And in separate incidents, the 37-year-old defendant also stole a £2,000 electric bike and threw chairs behind the bar at a pub after flying into a rage.

Jailing him for eight years, Judge Stuart Rafferty KC said: “You were then a dangerous man, no-one was interfering with you and if you thought they would you took action yourself. You were throwing chairs around, scaring all and sundry.

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“Then a member of the public who was doing nothing more than trying to stop you committing a crime, was dealt with in a barbaric way by you. You used a paving slab as a weapon and gave him a thorough going over. He did not deserve any of that at all.”

Sam Jones, prosecuting, said the first offence in time happened on September 22, 2022, in a pub in Nottinghamshire. He said there he bumped into his former partner of 15 years who had a restraining order out against him and ended up throwing the chairs behind the bars.

The prosecutor said the robbery happened in Hoefield Crescent, Bulwell, on the afternoon of October 27 last year. Mr Jones said: “The victim noticed the defendant trying to use a paving slab to smash a window of a van and asked him what he was doing.

“He was grabbed and taken to the floor by the defendant who then kicked him to the body and started punching him to the face and hitting him to the head with the slab. He then snatched a necklace from around his neck and then ran off down an alleyway.

“He was left with two fractured eye sockets, a fractured cheekbone and a broken nose. In a victim impact statement he said he ‘worries about it every day; and that his ‘head feels like a washing machine’.

“He also said he’d had the necklace for a number of years and that it held sentimental value to him. He said ‘I feel like a piece of me is missing’.” Duffy, of Jephson Road, Sutton-in-Ashfield, pleaded guilty to robbery, theft, criminal damage and breaching a restraining order.

He has 18 previous convictions for 39 offences, including a number of robberies, affray and burglary.

Steve Gosnell, mitigating, said his client, a father who he’d known for years, “used to rely on alcohol, cocaine and cannabis to navigate his way through life”. But since being remanded on this latest set of offences he’s attended counselling and psychological therapy sessions behind bars.

Mr Gosnell said: “He knows he will receive a substantial sentence today.”