Jealous ex-jockey shot at passers-by after Cheltenham
A ONCE promising jockey shot at innocent people out of his window with an air rifle after flying into a jealous rage while watching the Cheltenham Festival, a court heard yesterday, as he was jailed for more than two years.
James Brinkworth, 29, used a telescopic sight as he targeted four strangers over six hours in a “senseless and random” series of attacks in Exeter on March 15.
One victim, a student from Exeter University, required an operation to remove an expanding pellet from his cheek after he was struck just below his eye. Exeter Crown Court heard Dongya Wang could have been blinded if the shot had been fractionally higher.
Other victims were left with bruising, with one pellet penetrating through three layers of clothing. Brinkworth fired at several other pedestrians, including children.
He was arrested after armed police sealed off the area around the Globe Inn pub in Clifton Road, Exeter, and a former soldier living above the pub pinpointed where the shots were coming from.
The court heard Brinkworth had been drinking all day while watching horse racing on the television and became angry and upset because he is a former jockey whose own career failed.
Emily Cook, his defence lawyer, said: “He saw some of the people he had trained with racing that day and got to thinking about what he could have had and what he had lost.”
Brinkworth was jailed for two and a half years after he admitted wounding Mr Wang, three counts of causing actual bodily harm to the other victims and criminal damage to a pub window.
Judge Peter Johnson told him: “You repeatedly aimed at people, including children.
“Mercifully, the injuries were not as serious as they could have been.”