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Jailed Julian Stephens and partner, Donna Gellatly |
Man is jailed for horror stabbing in street
BETWEEN them they had racked up at least 60 convictions and were living what appeared to be an irreversible life of crime.
But last week the cycle of robbery and theft carried out by the Bonnie and Clyde pair Julian Stephens and Donna Gellatly to feed their drug addictions finally caught up with them.
On Friday, at Blackfriars Crown Court, the couple – who both have records stretching back to the early 1990s – were sentenced for a terrifying daylight stabbing in Seven Sisters Road in September that left a community traumatised.
Stephens, 35, was handed a four-year jail term while Gellatly, 33, was given a last-minute reprieve.
Recorder Mark Ockleton, suspending her 15-month term for 18 months, said he was giving Gellatly a final chance to fix her broken life for the sake of the couple’s baby, but warned if she broke the conditions of the sentence she could go straight to jail.
He said: “I have no doubt you are a very intelligent person who can make something of your life if you wanted to and maybe now you may want to.”
Gellatly, who lived with Stephens in Hornsey Road, Holloway, now faces monthly drugs tests and scrutiny by social workers if she is to be reunited with her child.
The pair’s life unravelled the moment she telephoned Stephens from Seven Sisters Road, pleading for help as an associate of his threatened to “chop up” her and the baby with a six-inch carving knife.
The so-called victim, Wayne Sang, was a former prison-mate of Stephens looking to settle a grudge who used Gellatly to get to him, defence barrister Dominic Benthall QC said.
Stephens rushed out and ended up turning Sang’s knife on him, puncturing a lung and leaving him with gut protruding from his stomach.
During the 10-minute frenzied attack he terrified the public, the court heard during the trial, clutching the knife as he ran up and down the busy shopping street and through a crowded pub-full of punters eating Sunday lunch, shouting “I’m going to kill you” at Sang.
Minutes later Gellatly hid the knife before disposing of it down a drain.
Defence barrister Jenny Hart QC argued Gellatly deserved a final chance as she was on a methadone programme and participating in regular check-ups in a bid to win back her baby.
Ms Hart QC, who revealed how at just 13 Gellatly was removed from her parents to live with her grandmother, said: “She is passive, accepting her fate. These are typical characteristics of someone with extremely low self-esteem. The sort of person who can unfortunately be led into this sort of pattern of bad behaviour.”
Stephens, whose record began in 1992 with attempted burglary, once served 45 months for a robbery in 1995.
Sentencing him, Recorder Ockleton said: “I accept you found he had a knife and you disarmed him, but after that you stabbed him. There was ample time for you to have second thoughts.”
Stephens, who told the judge he was “very grateful” for his term, had previous convictions of which “violence had been a characteristic” but was ruled not to be a danger to the public because the attack had not been random. Recorder Ockleton took two years off his sentence for his guilty plea.
The pair embraced in the dock before Gellatly mouthed “call me” as Stephens was led away.
Speaking outside court, Detective Constable Sam Stockdale of Islington CID expressed disappointment with the length of Stephens’ jail term and argued he was dangerous.
“Anybody that runs up and down a street waving a very large knife and stabs somebody, and runs through a pub on a Sunday lunchtime still holding the knife, should be considered a dangerous person,” she said. |
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