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news
Pair jailed for deliberately mowing down cyclist (Avon & Somerset Police)Police release "absolutely sickening" footage of cyclist deliberately rammed off bike, as men behind separate incident on pedestrian jailed
Two "callous" men have been jailed for a combined 14-and-a-half years after two attacks described by police as "absolutely sickening" saw a cyclist and pedestrian deliberately rammed by the driver of a car in Bristol.
Patrick James, 22, and Phillip Adams, 26, were found guilty of conspiracy to cause intentional grievous bodily harm in relation to the case involving a pedestrian and were sentenced yesterday at Bristol Crown Court, James sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison and Adams six years.
On Sunday 12 July 2020, Julian Ford was riding along a pavement in Broadlands Drive when he was deliberately rammed off his bike by the driver of a car, the cyclist suffering fractured ribs and air and blood in his chest cavity, causing a lengthy hospital stay.
Footage of the attack was found on James's mobile phone and showed the vehicle being driven up onto the pavement to deliberately mow Mr Ford down, while James could be heard laughing before and after the attack.
That evidence was discovered by Avon & Somerset Police as the force investigated a separate attack on NHS worker Katungua Tjitendero on the afternoon of Wednesday 22 July 2020 as he walked home from his shift at Southmead Hospital during the first months of the Covid pandemic.
Mr Tjitendero was also deliberately rammed by the driver of a vehicle, CCTV footage showing him walking towards a bus stop at around 4.30pm when he was struck by the driver of a blue Honda Accord (pictured below after the incident).
The NHS employee, who was 21 at the time of the attack, was rushed to the hospital where both he and his mother work, and suffered facial wounds, a broken nose, a fractured right leg and lacerations to both legs.
The court heard members of the public rushed to assist him after the driver of the vehicle had pinned him against a wall, which was partially demolished such was the severity of the impact. James and Adams fled the scene, with one of them shouting a racially abusive term at Mr Tjitendero.
"At first, I just thought it was some sort of crash," Mr Tjitendero told police. "Then they got out and said what they said. I definitely heard the n-word. I can't really remember what they looked like, I just remember two white males."
Mr Tjitendero added he had never seen the men before and had not been in dispute.
It was discovered James had bought the vehicle prior the the collision (a different vehicle was used during the attack on Mr Ford) and CCTV footage showed him using it over the following days. Adams' DNA was found in the car and he told officers he had been in the vehicle at times, although both men denied driving or being in the vehicle during the attack on Mr Tjitendero.
At Bristol Crown Court on Friday, both were found guilty of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm with intent for the attack on Mr Tjitendero, while James was also found guilty of of causing grievous bodily harm with intent following the assault on the cyclist Mr Ford.
James's sentence was eight-and-a-half years, while Adams was, in his absence, jailed for six. Police say: "A warrant has been issued for Adams' arrest and conversations have been held with the National Crime Agency to arrange his extradition from Dubai."
Detective Superintendent Mike Buck, who led the investigation into the attack on Katungua, said there was no question the incidents were linked and said the pair had displayed: "A callous disregard was shown for the victims' wellbeing who suffered really significant injuries.
"They were deliberately driven at in horrendous attacks and it's absolutely right that both men have today been handed lengthy prison sentences for their actions. The support of both Mr Ford and Mr Tjitendero and his family over the past four years has been invaluable and I'd again like to thank them for their patience while the investigation progressed."
Sentencing the pair, Judge Macmillan said: "This was a terrible thing to do to another person, let alone to celebrate it."
In a statement read outside court by Mr Tjitendero's mother, the family of the second victim stressed they will "continue to enjoy our lives in Bristol" and love the city's "diversity".
"We are very mindful that this cowardly attack, during which the worst racist abuse was shouted at Katungua, has impacted on all of us – family, friends, community, city, nation and beyond," they said.
"It has been a long journey and our family would like to thank everyone who came to Katungua's aid.
"We love our lives, we love each other and we love living in Bristol. We love Bristol's diversity, its art, its music, its sense of humour and decency, and its people. And we will continue to enjoy our lives in Bristol. We feel nothing but pity for the hate filled inadequate people that carried out this cowardly attack, for they and those like them have nothing to offer but hate."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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27 comments
I had a little dig about to find out a bit more if I could about this as it seems a bit of a strange thing and there was the fact that the two in the Patrick James and Phillip Adams disappeared from the scene. They were apparently collected by two others who were charged but aquitted.
The attempted murders took place in 2020
In 2023 the following were arrested.
Phillip Adams, 25, of Southmead
Patrick James, 21, of Lawrence Weston
Jordan McCarthy, 21 of Lawrence Weston
Daniel Whereatt, 49, of Bedminster
In 2022 a Daniel Whereatt 48 of Bristol was convicted of importing £800,000 of heroin. He was sentenced to 6 years.
In 2024 when Whereatt was aquitted of conspiracy to commit GBH in the Katungua case he is listed as 51. Which would potentially fit with these all being the same Daniel Wheratt. 192.com only lists 2 Daniel Whereatt and only one of those is at a Bristol address.
So now we have drug traffickers probably involved in this crime. Adams was convicted in his absence Police believe he is in Dubai. At the moment the only one going to jail is Patrick James and the Police are trying to extradite Phillip Adams.
I take issue with the use of the term 'men' to describe them.
Minor pedantry in the face of such an unpleasant story but - they haven't exactly been "jailed for a combined 14-and-a-half years", they've been sentenced to that but only one is in jail. The one with the shorter sentence is still on the lam - presumably will remain so if the offence was in 2020 but they still haven't got him.
And of course the one who has been sentenced to 8 1/2 years will only serve five of that max...
Seems to me that these are two young blokes who have been raised surrounded by the motonormative attitudes of 'popular culture' and the meeja where cyclists* just aren't humans the same as everyone else…
I wonder if Kemi Badenoch thinks that these two white men share in British cultural values?
*and Black people, it would appear.
Seems presumptuous. More like have been raised surrounded by attitudes where no human life is precious.
We dont have to make it all about us all the time.
I do think he's got a point, to be fair, there is considerable overlap in the rhetoric used primarily by the right wing around immigrants/asylum seekers and around cyclists, namely that both groups are freeloaders, both are taking away space from decent "normal" citizens, both pose a danger to the rest of society with their behaviours, both have far too many resources devoted to them that society can't afford, both are part of an "other" that does not accord with our traditional rights and freedoms and so on and so forth. It's not a surprise to me that when such Neanderthals go out seeking people to whom they can cause harm they would choose to attack cyclists as well as persons of colour, they are both seen as part of the "them" that isn't "us" and so fair game.
Fair enough, but sometimes it is about us.
TBH I was just arguing based on their having run down a cyclist and a Black guy.
There's no evidence (yet) of their having randomly run down some white working class folk so clearly some humans rank higher than others, in their world.
I think we need to ask who radicalised them?
That jail sentence is not long enough, they will be out in five and back on the roads somewhere, in the UK! You don't need a DVLA car license to drive a car or van just the vehicle.
I agree, I would have loved to have seen a much longer sentence imposed but I have to say the judge seems to have followed the sentencing guidance for GBH with Intent pretty closely. Looks like a Culpability A Harm 2 starting point of 5 years custody with some additional time imposed for aggravating factors. That's pretty much where I ended up too from the limited info given. Although I would have loved to have gone with a harsher sentence, I am not sure you could without risking it being subject to a review and reduction given the guidance they have to follow.
I usually comfort myself that, while there are some terrible and angry drivers out there, most of them don't actually want to kill or maim anyone. This footage is horrifying.
Another example of a case where the criminals should lose their taste buds and libido.
Only with real consequences will criminials reconsider their actions.
BBC Article - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr54r1y3qq5o
Not sure why it wasn't prosecuted as a racially-motivated crime.
A life driving ban should be applied to both of these criminals.
Bristol you say? I thought it was e-scooters that encouraged anti-social behaviour & crime there?
Why weren't they charged with attempted murder? Death was a likely outcome and it was only luck that neither were killed.
The rise of the far right continues unabated, ably fuelled by Farage & co.
I'm sure you have heard this before but CPS will only go ahead with a prosecution most likely to succeed. The bar for attepted murder or conspiracy to murder is very high - intention has to be proved. Without evidence to prove it then you would lose the case and they walk free. What they did have was the videos that proved it was not an accident. 8 and 6 years is still a lengthy sentence for the charge.
Well, they intentionally drove a car at two people: isn't that intent and proof that they wanted to kill them?
Whilst I sympathise with your position, I can understand that the prosecution would struggle to prove that there was intent to kill, and not that the intent was "merely" to cause grevious bodily harm (even if death was a possible outcome).
I'm sure the law has precedents but I do wonder. We obviously popularly consider motor vehicles as not being "lethal weapons" and being "under people's control" * BUT I'd say that's questionable.
And where there isn't doubt they've been deliberately used for harm (which appears to be the case here, regardless of whether direct "intent to kill" can be shown) I think more consideration may be due? The level of judgement and control by the attacker cannot be great ("I carefully drove past at 70mph and nudged him") and the destructive potential escalates very quickly with e.g. speed.
You can kill someone with almost anything but with some weapons they have to be very lucky to survive (and even then the victim is almost certain to be trashed). I think this would fall under (fairly) common knowledge - or is it more "motor vehicle exceptionalism" e.g. "no more intrinsically dangerous than a pair of boots"?
Presumably things like "they only set the 100kg bomb / thermonuclear device off next to him to scare him / make him jump" don't get the same benefit of doubt - as long as it can be shown that the perpetrator was basically mentally competent? Or does that fall under a specific separate offense (thus avoid the question)?
* Under control - at least when the Incompentence Paradox is not in force e.g. "she couldn't help crashing into him..."
If they had stabbed their victims, would it be GBH or attempted murder?
As far as I can tell, it would depend on the specifics of the case. A quick google turns up multiple recent cases in which people who carried out stabbings have been charged or convicted of GBH with intent rather than attempted murder e.g. [1], [2], [3]. One of the top results was this pretty sickening case in which the defendent argued that he wasn't trying to kill his girlfriend when he stabbed her 15 times (the jury failed to reach a verdict and a retrial is due next year).
As I said, the difficulty is that the prosecution needs to prove the intent was to kill. Obviously without actual mind reading this does have to be inferred from their actions to some extent, but it still needs to demonstrated what was going through the defendent's head. You might think that the only reason you would deliberately drive into someone is if you wanted to kill them, but can you be sure that is what the defendent was thinking?
I haven't found that much information specifically on attempted murder, but this page has some interesting bits of case law that focus on intent in the context of murder: https://www.lawteacher.net/cases/mens-rea-cases.php. Murder actually has a lower bar than attempted murder; for murder, the intent only need be to cause grevious bodily harm.
As I used to understand it, if the intention was to cause grievous bodily harm and the person died in consequence, then the crime was murder, surely then the punishment in this case where the intention was to cause grievous bodily harm, then the punishment should be the same as attempted murder.
The law is slightly bizarre in this area: the first part of what you say is correct, if you set out to inflict GBH and a person dies as a result, that is murder, however if you set out to inflict GBH and the person does not die, it remains GBH, not attempted murder, even though you might have done exactly the same thing and it's just luck that they didn't die. For an attempted murder charge the prosecution must prove that the culprit had a definite intention to kill, not just inflict GBH.
Do not try and trivialise these attacks by branding them as part of another group to the one you identify with. The people who have carried this out are truly terrible people. We should all feel sad that we as a society nurtured them and failed their victims.
I do think the sentence was light for GBH with intent it could have been more severe somehow they could not have been deemed as maximum culpability maximum harm category.
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/causing-g...
Mr Duncan-Smith please take note...