Two thugs who hurled a smoke grenade and a traffic cone at police during angry protests have each been jailed for around three years.
Connor Bishop, 24, and Leon O’Leary, 41, are the first to be sentenced over the riots that broke out on Tuesday last week following the murder of student Henry Nowak by 23-year-old Sikh killer Vickrum Digwa.
O’Leary was sentenced to three years and one month in prison today for the three offences, and Bishop was jailed for two years and eight months.
Both have a string of previous convictions and admitted violent disorder.
The protests commanded crowds of around 1,000 people, and came after anger erupted following the release of police body-worn video showing 18-year-old Mr Nowak being placed in handcuffs by police moments before he became unconscious and subsequently died.
Digwa was jailed for life to serve a minimum of 21 years for Mr Nowak’s murder after falsely claiming that the teenager had racially abused him.
Footage played during the sentencing hearing at Southampton Crown Court today showed O’Leary ‘walking casually’ in the crowd in front of the police cordon when he spotted a smoke grenade on the ground, picked it up and threw it towards police.
O’Leary also admitted and was sentenced for resisting a police officer and possession of an offensive weapon – a samurai sword in his bedroom, from when officers came to arrest him.
Leon O’Leary, who has a string of previous convictions, was jailed for just over three years for his role in the disorder
Connor Bishop threw a traffic cone at police during the disturbance last week
There have been protests in Southampton following the murder of student Henry Nowak, at which several members of the public have been arrested
Henry Nowak was murdered on a night out by a Sikh man who made bogus claims that he had been the victim of a racist attack
O’Leary is said to have adopted a ‘fighting stance’ when officers arrived at his home in Basingstoke at 3.30am on June 7.
He then threatened officers who had to use pava spray to subdue him for arrest, the court heard.
Officers found the samurai sword, which O’Leary said he owned for 20 years as decorative only and he did not know the law had changed on owning one.
The court heard he has nine previous convictions for 17 offences.
Meanwhile Bishop, 24, from Southampton, was seen in footage wearing a black jumper with ‘boys get sad too’ written on the back, carrying a yellow traffic cone which he threw towards officers.
In the video shown in court, the father could be seen running with the cone, ‘pursuing officers for some time with it’, prosecutor Siobhan Linsley told the court.
She said: ‘Once it’s thrown he then follows it again, picks it up again.’
He answered no comment when arrested at his home on June 3, but then accepted he was there when shown footage.
He also admitted throwing a box of screws and punching a wall not captured on footage.
He told officers in interview he was brought up Christian and ‘threw items to fit into the crowd’ and that he had drunk a small amount of beer ‘that made him more lairy’.
Bishop has seven convictions for nine offences, and was under a community order for elbowing his mother after an argument broke out with his then-girlfriend, the court heard.
Defending Bishop, Thomas Evans said: ‘He is perhaps an example of peer pressure and group thinking’.
He said Bishop told him he ‘wanted to fit in’ and that he was ‘very sorry’ to anyone who was hurt.
Mr Evans said of Bishop and O’Leary: ‘They are not the instigators of this disorder, they are inevitable result of other individuals who seek to harness anger.’
The prosecutor told the court ‘many individuals … turned up from outside the area’ to attend the protest.
The disorder, which cost over £400,000 in police funding, left 12 officers and one police dog with injuries.
