7:10am Friday 27th August 2010
A TEENAGER reduced to sofa-surfing and living in an underpass following a fall-out with his mother was jailed for two years for attempted robbery.
Patrick Murphy, 18, punched a man waiting at a bus stop in West End Road, Southampton, three times in the face.
Then, an unknown accomplice struck him with a bicycle chain and demanded his mobile phone and cash.
The victim, however, ran off and was treated in hospital for cuts and bruises, said prosecutor Marcus Davey.
Murphy, of Lydgate Road, Southampton, who also admitted two thefts and one attempted theft from cars, was in breach of two community orders.
Passing sentence at Southampton Crown Court, Recorder Nicholas Atkinson QC told Murphy: “You drastically went to pieces last year and appeared before courts again and again. There is no alternative to a prison sentence.”
In mitigation, Anne Brown said that the crime had been spontaneous. Murphy thought that the victim had attacked him two weeks earlier and when he realised that it was a case of mistaken identity he stopped, she said.
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