Smirking thug who battered his friend, forced him to strip naked and then paraded him through the streets is jailed
Karl Griffiths, 42, of Penclawdd, Gower, staged his heinous attack after a day of group socialising at the friend's flat in the Welsh village on January 30 this year.
The distressing ordeal saw him march his naked friend through the centre of Penclawdd, down what is the main road through the whole north Gower area.
This was filmed by people in the village on their mobile phones, with the footage showing the poor man in clear distress.
Before this, Griffiths - who already has a 'substantial criminal history' - had hit his friend and his friend's girlfriend with her crutches and punched him repeatedly in the head and all over his body.
He also threw a lamp across the room, destroyed their TV, shouted abuse, took the couple's phones off them, locked everyone present in the flat - and told police on the phone: 'I'm going to kill someone'.
He was now been locked up for 31 months, with sentences for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, battery, kidnap and criminal damage to run concurrently.
The attacker received a one quarter discount for pleading guilty - and he will only serve up to half his sentence in custody, with the rest on licence in the community.
Griffiths' previous offences include non-domestic burglaries, dishonesty matters, weapons offences and supplying Class A drugs.
His police headshot shows him looking right at the camera with a brazenly direct gaze and a smug expression.
Judge Huw Rees, at Swansea Crown Court, said Griffiths' behaviour was 'irrational' and probably done under the influence of drink and drugs.
But he also admitted that by the look of his references, other people thought well of Griffiths and saw him as a 'kindly man'.
The attacker hopes his friend can forgive him in time.
Meanwhile, the victim said in an impact statement read by Mr Jones he could not believe someone he considered a friend could have treated him so poorly.
He added it has had a massive effect on his mental health, leaving him feeling unsafe in his own home.
But in an astonishingly generous move, the victim said while what Griffiths did was 'not right', he did not want his friend to be prosecuted.
His partner said in an impact statement the horrifying attack had made her anxiety and depression even worse.
She hoped everyone could 'put this behind them' and move on.
Prosecutor Craig Jones said everything started after a big group hangout had extended into the evening.
Griffiths received a phone call at one point in the night, briefly leaving the flat to answer.
But when he returned, he locked the door behind him and told those present no one was leaving.
After taking the phones of his friend and his friend's partner and refusing to return them, he accused the pair of stealing from him.
The prosecutor said it was not clear whether he was accusing them of stealing money or drugs.
It was then he assaulted the couple with the crutches and punched the friend, before hurling the abuse at them and throwing the lamp across the room, smashing it.
Griffiths 'demanded' his friend take his clothes off, telling him they were 'going for a walk' and forcing him outside, the prosecutor said - before he 'essentially paraded him naked around the streets'.
It was a highly public area, near the village's large CK Foodstores supermarket.
The barrister said he would not play the footage of the humiliating naked walk in open court out of respect for the dignity of the victim, unless the judge wanted it shown.
Griffiths then took his friend back to his flat where he smashed the TV and called the police.
It was then he made the terrifying threat: 'Someone better come and get me, I'm going to kill someone.'
He was arrested, saying in his police interview his arrival at his friend's flat had come after he had argued with his mother.
Griffiths accused his friend of stealing from him and admitted to giving him 'a clip' and hitting him with 'a few punches'.
He accepted making him march around outside the flat to humiliate him.
Griffiths previously pleaded guilty to battery, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, criminal damage, and kidnapping when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
His lawyer James Hartson said whatever grievance his client may have had with his friend, it 'could not remotely justify the level of humiliation and violence' handed out.
But he added intoxication may go some way towards explaining it.
The attacker has now rid himself of his addiction to controlled drugs and has enhanced-prisoner status at HMP Swansea, the barrister continued.
Judge Rees pointed out Griffiths' victims had been his friends - and the 'parading' through the streets had occurred in a particularly public location.
Griffiths' concurrent custodial sentence comprises 31 months for kidnap, three months for battery, 18 months for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one month for criminal damage.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Screaming sex-trafficking victim is dragged back to captivity after attempting to flee from illegal migrant
Startling surveillance video captures a woman screaming for help as she is forcibly carried back into a trailer home in Texas, where authorities say she was held as a sex slave for nearly a week. Jose Armando Carcamo-Perdomo, a 22-year-old undocumented migrant from Honduras, was arrested on July 14 and faces charges of aggravated kidnapping and assault after Harris County Police discovered a woman being held captive inside his Houston home. The harrowing footage, recorded by a neighbor's security camera, shows Carcamo-Perdomo carrying the woman - identified only as a Chinese migrant - in a bear-hug grip as she kicks and struggles to escape. A dog can be heard loudly barking in the background as the woman shrieks for help. 'She tried to leave, but this defendant carried her back inside the residence without her consent,' a Harris County judge said. 'He tied her up and then sexually assaulted her.' Investigators say the woman had traveled from New York to Houston after being offered a higher-paying job as a masseuse. But upon arriving, her passport was taken, and she was locked in a small closet without food or water, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. After at least five days in captivity, she managed to escape the closet and run from the trailer. However, Carcamo-Perdomo caught her outside and dragged her back inside as a concerned neighbor looked on. 'As soon as I drove out of the fence at work, I called 911 to report a possible child abduction,' the neighbor told ABC 7. When police arrived at the home on Elderberry Lane, near Beltway 8 and Highway 90, they found the woman 'bound by her hands.' 'There was a small closet with a piece of wood across the door that was screwed into the frame,' Lieutenant John Klafka, chief of the adult special crimes unit at the Harris County Sheriff's Office, told Fox News. 'They were able to rip that piece of wood off and open the door. It had been tied up. She had some type of object like a sock or something that was used to bound her hands.' Despite the evidence, the suspect claimed he didn't know anything about the woman in his home, according to Click 2 Houston. 'He knew there was someone in the house, but he claimed to have never seen her or said it was a woman that lived there but didn't know her, didn't see her, has never had any interactions with her,' Klafka told the outlet. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Carcamo-Perdomo entered the U.S. illegally in 2020 and was issued a notice to appear following a traffic stop. In 2023, however, an immigration judge dismissed the case, Fox News reported. In response to the incident, the DHS issued a statement calling for stricter immigration enforcement, saying the department is 'working day and night' to remove 'heinous' individuals. 'This heinous criminal illegal alien was freely roaming our interior and terrorizing American communities,' the DHS wrote on X, formerly Twitter. 'Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, ICE is working day and night to remove the MILLIONS of illegal aliens in our interior. LAW AND ORDER WILL PREVAIL!' Authorities now suspect the case may be part of a broader human trafficking operation, Click 2 Houston reported. 'He obviously is not the one that drove her from New York,' Klafka said. 'He's not the person that drove her from the first location in Houston. And we know there's other people involved.' Klafka emphasized that the woman did not know Carcamo-Perdomo before the incident and described the ordeal as a traumatic experience for a migrant with no local support. 'This is a very traumatic event. You know, you're in a foreign country. You were brought from one giant city to another that's halfway across the country south,' he said. 'She has no friends, no family. Nobody is here for her. So we've got to do everything we can to ensure that she can trust us to do our jobs and find the rest of the people that are involved in this.' Carcamo-Perdomo's attorney has released a statement maintaining his client's innocence. 'Our client, Mr. Jose Carcamo, is shocked by the serious allegations brought forth against him and firmly maintains his complete innocence. We remind the public that under the United States Constitution, every individual is entitled to the presumption of innocence, the right to due process, and a fair trial.' The unidentified woman is currently receiving medical care and counseling at an undisclosed location and the investigation is ongoing.
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil
SHAKING with so much rage that she struggled to breathe, Lehanne Sergison read a flirtatious Facebook message declaring her 'one in a million'. The Kent woman, 53, had received a response from the monster responsible for raping and fatally stabbing her aunt in the neck before going on the run. 11 11 Using a stranger's photo under the alias Missy Falcao, she had been trying to snare evil Andrew Ndlovu by tricking him into revealing his whereabouts so that he could be arrested by police. In 2014, the brute butchered Christine Smith, 59, who was recently bereaved, at her safari lodge in South Africa where he worked as a gardener. He then fled across the Zimbabwe border before sneaking back to Johannesburg under the radar - and cops told Lehanne: 'The chances of finding him are nil." But after spotting the killer actively looking for love on Facebook, "desperation" led her to take matters into her own hands and hatch her flirty plan, writing: 'Hello handsome u've (sic) got sexy eyes." As well as two and half years of exchanges with him, it would take three undercover police operations and a viral social media post before the ghoul was snared and handed two life sentences in 2022, eight years after the chilling attack. Despite Ndlovu's incarceration, Lehanne tells The Sun about the haunting memories that plagued her, his sickening attempt to escape justice and the botched investigation. 'It was spur of the moment and out of desperation,' Lehanne tells us. 'After seeing him advertising for women on dating sites, I feared there was going to be another victim. 'Shock, surprise, hope, a whole raft of emotions ran through my body when he first replied to me. I had to think quickly, flatter him and play to his ego. 'All of the time, I just wanted to tell him 'I know what you have done and who you are'. It was a bizarre way to live your life. 'The hardest thing was trying to keep him hooked. He always wanted to speak to Missy Falcao on the phone or video call, which I couldn't do. I snared my murdered aunt's rapist as flirty Facebook honey trap when cops gave up & botched sting…then sicko told evil lie 'It was difficult protecting my own sanity too. Authorities weren't interested in catching him so it was down to me. It left me frustrated, nauseous and with nightmares." Speaking ahead of the release of Amazon Prime Video documentary The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer, which recounts her battle for justice, she says her memories of her aunt are forever tainted. 'While I remember Christine and the wonderful woman she was, the grief you experience is untold and it's hard to distinguish between the memories and her traumatic murder," she says. 'Her life was taken from her in the most awful circumstances, we know she struggled, she fought him off her and tried her best to survive but he took that away. 11 11 'The attack was so cruel that it's difficult to remember the lovely memories, often all I can imagine is her lying in a bed bleeding to death.' Liverpudlian Christine was reeling from the passing of her husband Robbie, of Northern Ireland, from liver cancer, when she was violently killed in 2014. She was discovered dead in her South African lodge a day after withdrawing £1,000 to pay her staff, which had vanished when lodge manager Noelle Davis stumbled upon the grizzly crime scene. 'It's like a nightmare,' Noelle said through tears. 'She was strangled, stabbed, raped. I was sick… I couldn't cope with it… it was so unreal.' I broke down. I physically cried and cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances Lehanne Sergison When she summoned all the staff to break the news, there was one notable absence - Ndlovu - and when a teammate called him he yelled 'it's not me, it's not me.' By then, he was heading 340miles away to the Zimbabwe border after forcing his friend Hope to drive him at knifepoint so he could temporarily leave South Africa. Recalling the news of her aunt's death, Lehanne says: 'It was very weird, excruciatingly painful like an electric shock running through my body.' 'Hunt the b******' With Ndlovu in another country, the investigation soon dried up and Lehanne says the Foreign Office were 'all platitudes, all ticking boxes' but didn't aid her attempts to catch the killer. After a year, the South African government had yet to see an extradition order, which made Lehanne feel Christine 'was forgotten about' so she began her own search for answers on Facebook. The internet became a 'useful tool' because she was unable to travel to South Africa due to having such severe chronic asthma that she's hospitalised every six weeks. That year, Noelle informed Lehanne that Ndlovu has been spotted at a Johannesburg church and longing to 'hunt the b****** down' she told police, who monitored the area but didn't find him. 'I was told 'the chances of finding him are nil.' We saw it as a lost opportunity,' she adds. On the second anniversary of her death, Lehanne looked again at Ndlovu's Facebook profile only to see he had multiple accounts with varied spellings and that wasn't all. 'My head was shooting off all over the place, my stomach was in knots,' she says. 'He was having an active life on Facebook.' On some the profiles, he spouted religious verses but on others she realised he was actively posting on dating pages and described wanting 'a serious partner' of 'any age'. Determined to bring him to justice, Lehanne created her Missy Falcao fake profile, named after her two ex-racing greyhounds, and took a generic photo from the internet. Slowly, she added friends and posted pictures and comments to make the account look more legitimate. Within a few weeks she sent Ndlovu a flirty message. Lehanne described being 'barely able to take a breath' and panicking when he replied 'thanx (sic) hey… u are 1 in a million'. 'My heart was in my mouth, my stomach was doing somersaults," she adds. She claimed to be 27 years old, originally from Ghana, and an air stewardess, which acted as cover for the weird times she messaged, due to the time difference. Soon his messages became more flirty, with him calling her 'princess' and sending kiss-face emojis and eventually he revealed he was in the Johannesburg suburb of Brixton, and she obtained his phone number. She continued to extract information from him to buy police time and to find out more details in order for them to track him down - despite saying that flirting with him 'hurt every time and sickened me'. But the South African police refused to make any arrests. She contacted Sakkie Louwrens, the detective on the case, only to find he was now a private investigator. 'It snowballed from there,' Lehanne says. Sakkie convinced cops to try to triangulate Ndlovu's phone - where they track people through their mobile signal. Unfortunately, it wasn't successful. Sakkie said they were 'not far from him' when his phone battery died, meaning he could no longer be traced. After two days of silence, Ndlovu told 'Missy' his phone had been stolen but was growing suspicious of her and asked 'are you for real?' It set off alarm bells to Lehanne, fearing he was 'slipping away'. But police were planning a sting operation and took over contacting him on a local mobile phone. It gave a glimmer of hope to the Brit, who had exchanged thousands of messages with Ndlovu over nearly two and a half years. Shockingly, after the police operation date was pushed back, Ndlovu suddenly disappeared and cut all contact with Missy. Neither Lehanne nor police heard from him again. 'The moment to capture him, arrest him and get justice was gone forever, Missy Falcao was no more… and I felt lost,' she says. 'I broke down. I cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances.' 'To hell with it' In 2020, on the six year anniversary of her aunt's death, Lehanne disobeyed Foreign Office orders by sharing a picture of Ndlovu and his horrific crimes. For years Lehanne had been told 'never publish his photo' on Facebook in case it jeopardised the investigation but one moment pushed her over the edge. 'I thought, 'This case is dead in the water' then I saw a photo on his Facebook account of him suited and booted and enjoying life. 'I thought, 'To hell with it, I have nothing to lose' and published a post showing his face and revealing the horrific things he did to Christine. And it went viral.' Doomscrolling on her phone nearly 8,000 miles away in Johannesburg, Mellisa Le Hannie saw the post - which had been shared 70,000 times - and immediately recognised the man's face. It was their family gardener of five years, who was their 'best employee', and lived at the bottom of their garden with his girlfriend in a shack. 'I couldn't believe it could be him. I left him alone with my wife, my daughters, fixing things in the house,' Mellisa's horrified father Andrew Du Preez said. Ian knew they had 'one opportunity' to snare the killer and brought onboard former army reservist Reg Crewe to accompany police and ensure he didn't get away again. 'He looked like he had seen a ghost,' Reg said, recalling how Ndlovu stumbled out of his front door to be cuffed and marched to a police van Lehanne was kept abreast with the developments and when she saw the monster in cuffs she couldn't believe it - after six years he was finally captured. 'It's still hard for me to believe it's real,' she says. 'The tears just kept coming. I contacted lots of family members and friends. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops." But in the back of her mind, Lehanne feared Ndlovu may still evade justice because in South Africa 80 per cent of murder charges fail to secure a conviction. 'Zero remorse' In the weeks leading up to the trial in 2022, her health drastically declined and she ended up in intensive care. Sickening Ndlovu denied all five charges against him and claimed in court that Christine was in love with him and that they had consensual intercourse regularly. What he didn't realise was the damning evidence against him - including semen from the crime scene - and damning witnesses testimony. Ndlovu's pal Hope, who gave him money and escorted him to the Zimbabwe border, testified that he had been forced to drive at knifepoint proving he was 'a man on the run'. His ex-girlfriend of three years confirmed that he phoned her to say he was fleeing South Africa because 'I just murdered a white lady' while travelling in the car. Ndlovu was said to have 'shown zero remorse' throughout the case and was sentenced to two life sentence for raping and murdering Christine. When Lehanne was told the news in her hospital bed, she recalled being 'so insanely happy' that she 'cried and cried and cried'. Civil rights organisation Action Society say every day in South Africa 153 rapes are committed, yet only nine are reported, and up to 11 women are killed. Kaylynn Palm, head of the non-profit organisation, says there was one three-month period where 900 women were butchered and adds: 'Our bodies are crime scenes' Andrew says: 'We wanted to show the horrendous scale of femicide in South Africa and the world. It's an important story to tell because justice was found due to Lehanne refusing to give up.' The justice system runs on limited resources and 'moves at a pregnant snail's pace', says Kaylynn, pointing out it can take as long as four years for a case to conclude, during which time evidence and documents can be lost. Fortunately Ndlovu is now locked away. Lehanne says it's a relief knowing he 'can't do that to someone again' and adds that her long fight taught her one thing. 'Never give up on anything, be tenacious, noisy, a nuisance,' she says. Reflecting on her nearly three years undercover to snare Ndlovu, Lehanne believes Christine would have thought it 'gutsy, pretty foolish'. After a few moments pause, thinking about her 'lovely, chatty Scouser' aunt, she concludes: 'But I know she would have done the same for me.'
BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Jean Charles de Menezes Tube shooting prompts book by ex-officer
A former police officer has written a book he hopes will "put the record straight" over the death of Jean Charles de 27-year-old Brazilian electrician was killed by police outside Stockwell Tube station in south London on 22 July 2005, the day after failed bombing attempts on the city's transport networkFormer Essex Police officer Steve Reynolds had just started a new job at the Independent Police Complaints Commission when the incident took place."First of all, Jean Charles was 100% innocent," he said. "Secondly, notwithstanding that, the two officers who shot him really believed that he was a suicide bomber about to detonate the bomb at any moment."I think it's difficult to perhaps correlate those two extremes but I wanted to articulate that in the book."The Metropolitan Police was fined £175,000 with £385,000 costs over the incident, for breaching health and safety laws. But no officers were prosecuted for the April, the force reiterated its apology to the family, who said it was a "travesty" no officer was held accountable in the 20 years since his de Menezes' cousin, Patricia da Silva Armani, said: "He was a completely innocent man. And yet, he was shot in cold blood."She added that it was "unacceptable that agents of the state can act with impunity". The former officer has been a consultant on a number of documentaries about the incident as well as a drama released on Disney+ in April called Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de book is titled: The Met on Trial."It became clear to me the actual investigation was not being covered in any of those documentaries," he explained."I was also very keen to just set the record straight about what had happened, because there are so many misconceptions about what happened which are still around today."People still think that he was carrying a rucksack, that he was wearing bulky clothing, that he failed to respond to a police challenge, that he ran away... these are some of the misconceptions I wanted to put right." He explained the surveillance team misidentified Mr de Menezes as a suspect after he left his block of flats close to where the suicide bomber actually caused a miscommunication with New Scotland Yard which led the control room to believe a positive identification had taken place, Mr Reynolds incident itself took place two weeks after the 7/7 terror attacks, when 52 people were killed in central Reynolds said: "There were certainly organisational failings but those two officers genuinely believed the person they were confronting was a suicide bomber."They believed once again that this was a suicide bomber, like 7/7, about to detonate his bomb and kill many, many people."You can only imagine how distraught they were... Those two officers are also having their own flashbacks because I'm sure there can't be many days where they don't think about what happened 20 years ago."Earlier this year, the Met Police said he was killed "at a time of unprecedented terrorist threat to London".A spokesperson said the force had been subject to numerous public inquiries, including two separate reports by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (now the Independent Office for Police Conduct)."No officer sets out on duty intent on ending a life. Our sole purpose is the complete opposite – the protection and preservation of life – and we have taken extensive action to address the causes of this tragedy," said the spokesperson. Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
