A CANCER patient has been left scared to leave her home after being brutally kicked in the face by a martial arts student.
Amateur kickboxer Talha Tariq, 19, assaulted and racially abused Carol Marr, 55, as she returned from a trip to buy a birthday present for her daughter.
Tariq, a biological sciences student at Stevenson College, was fined £500 at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday after being found guilty following a two-day trial.
The teenage thug was also ordered to pay his victim £100 in compensation.
The assault took place in daylight in Whyte Place, Abbeyhill, on March 4.
Mrs Marr, who underwent cancer surgery shortly before the attack, said she fears reprisals from other Asian youths in the area after giving evidence against him.
She said: "It has left me worried about going out of my house. He has a lot of friends in the area, which is frightening."
Tariq, of Whyte Place, had claimed Mrs Marr attacked him first by grabbing hold of his neck and trying to strangle him, but Sheriff Donald MacLeod dismissed this as laughable.
"To say that a 54-year-old ill woman was grabbing you so tightly that as a fit 19-year-old you could not free yourself is unbelievable," he said.
"I have found you guilty of a nasty assault on a middle-aged woman not in the best health and of abusive racial language."
He found Tariq guilty of both racial abuse and assault.
Fiscal depute Karon Rollo told the court: "What we have here are vicious, nasty, racial comments along with a nasty assault on a sick lady in a public street in the afternoon."
The attack occurred as Mrs Marr was returning to her flat in nearby Milton Street after getting off a bus with her daughter, Maria, 35. Today she said: "We had been out shopping and were happy and looking forward to a nice weekend. Then I was hit on the back of the neck by an object, which I found out was a snowball.
"I looked down the road and saw a group of youths. I didn't approach closely, but asked them if they knew who threw it. Tariq quickly became very aggressive and racist, calling me a "f*****g white bitch", before pushing me against some railings.
"Then he jumped up and kickboxed me on the left cheek, which was left red and bruised. It was only because he was wearing heavy Timberland boots that I didn't suffer permanent injury.
"Another woman witnessed it and she confronted them along with my daughter. They were racially abused too."
Mrs Marr, who lives with her husband, Donald, was still recovering from live-saving surgery in her battle against cancer when she was assaulted. The procedure left her with no feeling in her left arm from the shoulder to elbow.
The historian, who is currently writing a book on Robert the Bruce, said: "Tariq told the police that I had tried to strangle him, which was ludicrous.
"After the surgery I could hardly use my arm. I had to go to see the police at Craigmillar station which was also a ghastly experience. He also lied in court by saying he did not train as a kickboxer after he told police that he practised for up to five hours a day."
A spokeswoman for Stevenson College confirmed Tariq was studying an access course to biological science, but added that he started in August in the months after the attack.
She said: "This was a pretty horrific incident but it happened before he enrolled with us."
No comments:
Post a Comment