Violent criminal Qamran Ali may well serve just one and a half years in custody for a crack-fueled rampage in which he tried to choke a chicken to death, split a woman’s lip, repeatedly stamped on an 11-year-old boy’s face, and assaulted another child who tried to intervene.
Ali, a 41-year-old man with previous convictions related to kidnapping, firearms, and breaking a woman’s jaw in two places, first tried to kill a chicken by “wringing its neck” and then launched a savage attack on his first child victim as he lay sleeping, according to a Worcester News court report.
“He rained kicks and punches down upon this innocent little boy. That child describes the defendant as stomping on his face,” said the prosecutor, Olivia-May Appleby.
The boy suffered nerve damage and had four of his adult teeth knocked out during the course of the attack, and may be left with dental issues for the rest of his life. “Significant treatment” including a prescription for painkillers, a course of antibiotics, and a root canal have already been required.
Ali went on to punch a woman in the face and assault a second child in what the prosecutor described as “a complete frenzy”, branding him a “volatile and vicious” criminal who “doesn’t have an ounce of consideration for his vulnerable victims”.
But despite describing the assault on the boy as the most serious case of assault occasioning actual bodily harm he had ever dealt with at sentencing — Ali also plead guilty to two counts of assault related to the woman and the second child — Judge Nicholas Cole decided it was appropriate to sentence him to just three years in prison. Under the present incarnation of British justice standards, typically just half of such sentences are actually be served behind bars before release on licence.
Time Ali spent on remand will also be subtracted from his prison time.
Judge Cole handed down this sentence despite saying that the fact Ali “had taken a significant amount of crack cocaine the day before and had also been smoking cannabis” did not excuse his behaviour, and that he had launched “a frenzied attack on an 11-year-old boy who was utterly defenceless and had been sleeping”.
Ali was also given a restraining order which instructs to not contact his victims.