9:50am Saturday 4th September 2010
By Jack Royston
A CRACK cocaine addict behind an “unpleasant and nasty” knife-point robbery on a taxi driver was handed a six year jail term today.
Tony Gritton held up 37-year-old Rahel Noristani with a six inch blade in Stonegrove, Edgware, on May 16, taking £100 in cash and the sat nav from the glove compartment.
The 25-year-old, of Northfield Road, Barnet, pressed the knife to his victim's stomach while his accomplice, sitting in the back seat, pressed another knife to the cabbie's throat.
The pair fled into the Stonegrove estate where Gritton's girlfriend lived.
Harrow Crown Court heard how the unemployed defendant, a heavy user of crack cocaine, was found guilty but bailed on April 23 because he has a degenerative disease.
He absconded for three months before family members say he turned himself in, but he says he was so heavily under the influence of drugs he cannot remember whether he gave himself up or was arrested.
Sentencing Gritton, Judge recorder Peter Rouch QC said: “You and your co-robber lured the taxi driver out to where you were waiting for him. Your victim was vulnerable.
“He was a taxi driver on his own in his vehicle. You took him to a quiet place where you and your co-robber were determined to rob him.”
He added: “You both had knives, you both produced the knives and used them to this extent: your co-robber put the knife to the victim's throat, you put the knife to the victim's stomach.
“Having done that you of course robbed him of money and property.”
Gritton will serve half his sentence in prison and half on licence.
His co-robber has not been caught.
Jeffrey Israel, defending, said his client absconded because he was in a “spiral of drug use and fear”
caused by what he described as a “pernicious addiction”.
He said: “He has never before spent any time in prison. It is an environment he is terrified of entering.”
He added: “He will now begin to come to terms with the effect and consequences of such an unpleasant and nasty offence that he is guilty of.”
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