Robber thought "goth" would be an easy target

3:50pm Thursday 9th October 2008

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A ROBBER who took a teenager's mobile phone because he was an "easy" victim has been jailed for 12 months.

Dean Green picked his 16-year-old victim, who had black hair, because he thought all "goths" were easy targets.

Newcastle Crown Court heard how the 21-year-old had warned the student "Give me your phone or I will knock you out" before snatching the handset at Park Lane bus station in Sunderland on April 1.

He was arrested and asked by police if he had selected the lad because he thought he was an easy victim.

Green told them: "All goths are aren't they?"

Green, of no fixed address, admitted robbery on the day his trial was due to start at Newcastle Crown Court.

His barrister Tony Hawks told the court: "It was a piece of bullying behaviour, he doesn't really know why he did it because in the course of running away he lost the phone, he was so drunk he dropped it.

"He is very sorry about what he did."

The court heard Green had downed eight or nine pints before the attack.

Judge Richard Lowden sentenced Green to 12 months behind bars.

The judge said; "This 16 year old boy was extremely frightened.

"This was all because you were, at the time, behaving like a drunken bully."