Another Race Attack
Stabbed 25 times for mobile By Justin Davenport, Evening Standard

One of the last things Glyn Darkin remembers is talking on his mobile phone to his girlfriend. It was a warm spring night and the 25-year-old engineer had been out with old university friends.

The next thing he recalls is waking up in intensive care with 25 stab wounds inflicted by a street robber who wanted his phone.

Mr Darkin's memory of events has been aided by witnesses but psychologists believe he blanked out what happened to him next as a survival instinct.

He had suffered wounds to the arms, chest and neck, one of them grazing the outer casing of his heart. Surgeons who carried out emergency surgery described his recovery as "miraculous". Later they told him they had not expected him to come round from his coma.

Today, as his assailant Clinton Noel, an unemployed 21-year-old, began an eight-year jail sentence for attempted robbery and grievous bodily harm, Mr Darkin told of his ordeal and how he was branded a racist in court by Noel in a cynical bid to clear his name. The charge was rejected by the judge.

Mr Darkin, from Gloucester, described how he was in Grosvenor Avenue when Noel demanded his phone and then began pushing and threatening him. When the 25-yearold tried to fight him off the assailant produced a knife and began a frenzied attack.

He said: "He just went crazy. Witnesses have told me that he was stabbing me and I was fighting back trying to push him away. He got me in a headlock and he was just stabbing me in the neck and chest.

"One of the knife thrusts went behind my voice box, both my lungs were punctured, all my intestines were punctured and one blow nicked the casing of my heart."

Mr Darkin, a car noise and vibration engineer, spent four days in a coma in the Whittington Hospital following the attack last May.

He said: "I still do not know how I survived. The surgeons wrote to my GP afterwards and described it as miraculous. You hear of people being stabbed once and dying and I read about Tim Robinson, the estate agent who was stabbed and died and I thought, 'That could have been me.'

"I am eternally grateful to the ambulance staff and a doctor who was at the scene who came and helped. The emergency services

came very quickly. I was unlucky to be there but lucky that the doctors were able to work their magic."

Noel, of Bethnal Green, pleaded not guilty at his trial at Kingston crown court in January after trying to blame Mr Darkin for the attack, claiming racial abuse. The claim was refuted by witnesses who saw Noel trying to steal the victim's phone.

However, it was a claim that shocked and offended Mr Darkin. "They tried to suggest that it was a racist attack which I found very disturbing. Some of the things they tried to imply were simply not true, it was an eye-opener to see the criminal-justice system at work." When he saw Noel in court he did not recognise him. "I have always tried to take a positive look at my experience. I don't want to let it get to me or he will have won in some way."

After his release from hospital Mr Darkin had to undergo an Aids test because Noel cut himself in the struggle. "It was a very difficult time for me and my girlfriend," he said.

Noel was arrested after a fast-track DNA system introduced under the Yard's Safer Streets initiative against street crime traced him within eight days. He was held when a DNA sample found at the crime scene matched one held in the national DNA database following his arrest and conviction in 2000 for possessing a knife.

Detective Sergeant Tim Wilkinson of Islington CID said: "I am pleased at the outcome of the case, particularly for the victim, who was unfairly accused in court of being a racist and of bringing the knife to the scene.

"This was a vicious and completely unprovoked attack on a young man who was targeted for his mobile phone. The Met will not tolerate such violence."

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Now I'm going to see how many seconds it is before you try and blame the white guy for bleeding on the black guys shirt.. go on, be predictable and defend the robber as usual...