JUSTICE? My brother was killed by a man who should have been in jail.They let him go free for a second shot at murder..
THE sister of train stabbing victim Lee Pomeroy says Britain has gone soft on crime.
Kim Pomeroy, 53, said not enough is being done to tackle the knife epidemic.
And she hit out at the penal system which gave Lee’s killer – who had served time for an earlier stabbing – “another shot at taking a life”.
She said: “It’s a joke. They freed him to do it again and this time he got it right. He stabbed my brother 18 times.”
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Star Sunday a year after the harrowing trial, Kim said: “It’s no wonder the country is engulfed with knife crime.
We’re just too soft in this country.
“The prisons are overcrowded and they don’t want to keep people in jail.
“Since Lee was killed nothing has changed.
“It makes me feel so despondent.” Lee was killed by ex-gangster Darren Pencille, 37, in a row over a train seat as he headed into London with his son to celebrate his 52nd birthday in January last year.
CCTV footage showed drug user Pencille, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, pull a lock knife from his pocket and plunge it into Lee’s neck. He inflicted 17 more wounds in 25 seconds.
Pencille had a long history of violence, including convictions for carrying knives, possessing a firearm and ammunition, and assaults. In 2010 he was jailed for four-and-a-half years for stabbing another man in the neck. The day before the deadly attack on Lee, Pencille had visited his psychiatrist, who said there were “no concerns of risk to himself or others”. Kim said the family were relieved Pencille was given 28 years behind bars without parole – the maximum sentence in England – for killing Lee.
But she said he should not have been free to launch the lethal assault.
Kim continued: “The penal system let my brother down. The day my brother died that man should still have been in prison, not walking the streets. He’d already stabbed someone twice in the neck, and he served half his sentence.”
She added of Pencille’s attack on her brother: “The first wound was straight to the neck, which was what killed him.
“He knew what he was doing, but he’d been deemed no threat.”
Kim said too many families who had lost loved ones see their killers released from jail after a few years. She