Jailed, thug who stabbed reveller and club bouncer
A TEENAGE thug who knifed an innocent bouncer outside an Oldham nightclub has been jailed.
Doorman Mohammad Dilras was the second person Shaquille Baxter, 19, stabbed after he flew into a rage outside Liquid and Envy in the town centre.
He knifed a reveller who had attacked him before turning on the security guard.
Baxter has been jailed for four years by a judge, who raised concerns about his ‘worrying set of convictions.’ His girlfriend Saskia Kuster, also 19, narrowly avoided jail after stashing the knife in a friend’s handbag.
Minshull Street Crown Court was told Baxter was initially trying to be peacemaker when Kuster and her friend were attacked inside the club last December.
He took Kuster outside and put her in a taxi before going back for her friend, the court heard.
As Baxter went back inside the club, the man suspected of assaulting his girlfriend attacked him from behind, landing a ‘heavy’ punch, the court was told.
Baxter, who was carrying a knife, brandished the weapon and stabbed the man twice – once in the stomach and once in the arm.
Seeing the scuffle, security at the club on Retiro Street rushed over.
Mr Dilras, 23, spotted the knife and tried to apprehend Baxter, who lashed out and stabbed him in the neck.
Steven Wild, prosecuting, said Baxter told Mr Dilras’ colleagues: “I didn’t mean to get your boy.”
He continued to struggle and was eventually detained by police, the court heard.
In his custody photo, Baxter has a black eye and injuries to his face.
Mr Dilras was hospitalised and had to have stitches. He avoided serious, long-term damage.
Speaking to the M.E.N. in the aftermath of the attack, in the early hours of Sunday, December 3 last year, Mr Dilras said the knife had struck his spine – and that he was lucky to be alive.
“The knife went in at the side of my neck and sliced off a bit of my spine,” he added. “I was lucky it didn’t go into it. I could have been paralysed or killed. I’m very, very lucky to be honest.”
The court heard that during the scuffle, Baxter discarded the knife, before Kuster picked it up and put it in her friend’s handbag.
The following morning, after speaking to her parents, the girl rang police and handed it in, Mr Wild said.
Baxter, of Clough Avenue, Sale, pleaded guilty to wounding with intent, unlawful wounding, and possession of a knife at an earlier hearing.
Kuster, of Nettleford Road, Whalley Range, admitted perverting the course of justice.
Julian Goode, defending Baxter, who has previous convictions for threatening people with both a gun and a broken bottle, said: “He accepts he made an incredibly foolish and stupid decision to equip himself with a knife and then to utilise it.”
Sentencing Baxter, Judge Tina Landale told him: “I have no doubt if you were not carrying a knife, things would not have ended up as they did. But you have a history of carrying weapons.
“You have had a difficult background with no role models to guide you and you don’t have the skills or ability to think and react in the right way.
“But you have a very worrying set of convictions.”
Kuster was handed an eightmonth jail term, suspended for a year, and ordered to carry out 140 hours of unpaid work.