Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Gang convicted over alleyway stabbing
‘It made my head bounce off the wall in front of me. Everything started to spin - my vision started to pulsate’
A violent gang has been convicted for their part in a brutal attack on a girl who was stabbed in the leg and kicked in the head ‘like an American football’.
Teenager Channey Smith was set upon by a woman and two men in an alleyway in Brymore Road, Canterbury.
The attack flowed from a family feud, with Naomi Roberts, 20, threatening to kill Miss Smith over Facebook, saying she would “have to fight like a true traveller girl”.
Roberts, 20, plunged a knife into Miss Smith’s leg after trying to aim it at her chest.
Her boyfriend, Frederick Lamb, 19, then kicked Miss Smith in the head as she lay helpless on the floor.
Her brother, George Roberts, 21, and Lamb were acquitted of wounding with intent but found guilty of the lesser charge of unlawful wounding after a trial at Canterbury Crown Court.
Naomi Roberts was found guilty of wounding with intent.
Miss Smith admitted she was happy to clash with Roberts in a fair fight, but she was ambushed, outnumbered and stabbed in the leg.
Giving evidence from behind a screen, just metres from her attackers, Miss Smith described how she was rounded on behind garages in Brymore Road in February 2019.
The teenager described how she left a Prince’s Trust workshop with classmates to cut through Brymore Road when the defendants and a small number of others cut off their path.
She said the attack broke out when Naomi Roberts grabbed her by the hair and swung her around.
Miss Smith told how Naomi and an unidentified teenager wrenched her to the floor, where she suffered multiple kicks to the head, and then a knife wound to the calf muscle.
“I was getting kicked in the head and then it just stopped. I sat up and everything was spinning,” Miss Smith said.
“That is when Fred (Lamb) kicked me in the head and told me not to tell anyone about this.”
When prosecutor Kieran Brand asked “How did he kick
you?” Miss Smith replied: “How you would kick an American football over the posts.
“It made my head bounce off the wall in front of me. Everything started to spin - my vision started to pulsate.”
Miss Smith added she only realised she had been stabbed after her leg felt “cold and wet.”
“I tried to push myself up and felt an excruciating pain in my leg,” she said.
“That is when I saw the stab wound on my leg.”
Miss Smith described how she
was forced to protect herself by grabbing the sharp end of the blade, causing a cut to her hand when Naomi moved it towards her ribs.
Giving evidence, the trio claimed there was no knife. They said Miss Smith became injured after attacking Naomi after they happened on her by chance.
They argued the leg wound occurred when Miss Smith either stabbed herself during the tussle or fell on debris.
Giving evidence, Lamb tried convincing jurors the trio never spoke of the attack, even as they walked away from the scene, or during the fallout as the police investigation unfolded, resulting in their arrest.
But Mr Brand labelled Lamb a liar, describing his account “as if he lives his life as if in some kind of silent movie”.
Benjamin Deskaj, 22, a friend of the trio, was acquitted of intimidating an eyewitness of the attack.
He was alleged to have approached the girl in Canterbury city centre, telling her the other defendants knew where she lived.
Naomi and George Roberts, both of Radfall Rise, Whitstable, were acquitted of threatening another with a knife.
The pair, alongside Lamb, of the same address, will be sentenced early next year.