Majid Sami conducted the frightening charge on the bus in Digbeth only a week after been set a deferred prison sentence. A homeless man who went mad with a claw hammer on a Birmingham bus occupied with travellers has been led to prison.
Majid Sami did the petrifying riot on the bus in Digbeth only after a week he had been given a suspended prison ruling for a different crime.
Sami, 41, who is destitute, had been sentenced by Birmingham judges of using intimidating orders or behaviour, causing unlawful destruction and owning an aggressive firearm.
However, he was condemned at Birmingham Crown Court because the event was just a week after the suspended sentence.
Gary Cook, prosecuting, told the court how Sami got onto the bus in Digbeth on December 30 last year and declined to pay the charge.
Because it was an eventful period with masses of travellers getting on and off, the driver didn’t challenge him.
Although when the bus decelerated down before the next stop, Sami – sitting in the middle of the bus – yelled at the driver “Don’t stop!”
The driver disregarded him and stopped to let people on and off.
By this point Sami came to the front of the bus and began striking the perspex screen around the driver’s cab with a claw hammer, yelling, cursing and shouting.
“He hit the screen six times, but luckily it withstood the blows,” said Mr Cook.
“The driver was stuck in his seat but managed to press the panic button.
“The defendant got off the bus and then started hitting the front and the sides of it with the hammer, smashing some windows.”
During the course of the alarming event travellers comprising a mother with a child observed the spectacle.
Seven days beforehand, Sami had been set a suspended prison sentence for aggravation and breaking a restraining order taken out by his estranged wife.
Sami’s barrister, Lynette McClement, said her client had hopped on the bus to flee two men who were attempting to strike him with a claw hammer and knife.
She said he had been able to to grab the hammer off his attackers and entered the bus “terrified and running on adrenaline and fear”.
Ms McClement said he shouted at the driver not to stop the bus because he was scared his assailants would enter and catch him.
She said her client underwent a broken foot and wounds to his head and face, which needed mandatory hospital treatment, in the occurrence.
“He had no previous convictions before December, but he became completely adrift after his marriage broke down and he lost everything – his job, his house and his friends,” she said.
The judge, Christopher Tickle, forced a seven-month jail term on Sami.
He said he believed that the homeless man bounded on the bus, scared for his life, but had nevertheless “created an awful lot of fear” for travelers.
