This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
    • Politics
    • Transport
    • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Business
    • Crime
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Education
    • Sport
    • Harrogate
    • Ripon
    • Knaresborough
    • Boroughbridge
    • Pateley Bridge
    • Masham
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts

Interested in advertising with us?

Advertise with us

  • News & Features
  • Your Area
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts
  • Politics
  • Transport
  • Lifestyle
  • Community
  • Business
  • Crime
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Education
  • Sport
Advertise with us
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Latest News

We want to hear from you

Tell us your opinions and views on what we cover

Contact us
Connect with us
  • About us
  • Advertise your job
  • Correction and complaints
Download on App StoreDownload on Google Play Store
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Statement
  • Comments Participation T&Cs
Trust In Journalism

Copyright © 2020 The Stray Ferret Ltd, All Rights Reserved

Site by Show + Tell

Subscribe to trusted local news

In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

  • Subscription costs less than £1 a week with an annual plan.

Already a subscriber? Log in here.

12

Feb 2024

Last Updated: 14/02/2024

Harrogate teen jailed for terrifying knifepoint robbery

by John Plummer

| 12 Feb, 2024
Comment

0

danny-peter-smyth-20072004-1
Danny Peter Smyth

A Harrogate teenager has been jailed for an attempted knifepoint robbery in which he lunged at the victim with a serrated blade after warning him: "Don’t think I won’t take your life".

The named victim and his female friend heard the “click” of a folding knife after Danny Smyth crept up on them in King Edward’s Drive in the Bilton area of Harrogate and demanded his mobile phone.

Smyth, 19, from Pannal, had followed the two friends onto King Edward’s Drive and crossed over onto their side of the street before creeping up behind them, prosecutor Kelly Clarke told York Crown Court.

The victim asked him:

“What’s your problem? What’s wrong?”


Smyth replied:

“Don’t think I won’t take your life.”


The victim and his friend then heard a “click” and saw Smyth holding a three-inch serrated switchblade which he “flicked out”.

They said they heard the flick or lock knife “crack into place”.

Smyth then told the victim:

“Don’t think I won’t stab you. Don’t get lippy.”


The terrified victim quickly crossed the road to try to escape. As he walked away, he said to his friend: “What was all that about?”

Ms Clarke said that Smyth must have heard him because he crossed the road again towards the victim and repeated: “Don’t get lippy.” Ms Clarke added"

“He saw the phone in (the victim’s) hand and demanded it. He then lunged at him with the knife.”


The knife missed and the victim struck Smyth in the face in self-defence, knocking him into a bush. The victim and his friend then ran away and called police.

They said the victim’s eyes were “like saucers” and that he was clearly under the influence of some kind of substance.

Officers soon located Smyth and arrested him. He was taken to Harrogate Police Station where he became extremely aggressive and verbally abusive with officers.

Abused police


One officer was called a deeply offensive name as Smyth threatened to “knock her the fxxx out” and spit in her face, before kicking that officer and her colleague repeatedly in the arms and legs.

The shocking series of events occurred on June 13 last year while Smyth was already facing a public-disorder charge at the Crown Court following a previous violent incident in Harrogate on April 16, 2021, when police were called out to Knox Chase by neighbours.

“Police were called (out) to reports of…males fighting with residents,” said Ms Clarke.


One of Smyth’s co-defendants in that case, 20-year-old Lewis Edmondson, of Byland Place, and a youth who can’t be named for legal reasons, had been walking along the street when the youth fell into a hedge outside a property in Knox Chase.

Neighbours Neil Lyons, 51, and Andrew Preston, 50, came out of their property to confront the pair because there had been “a number of incidents involving youths in Knox Chase in the past”.

Ms Clarke said a fight broke out among all five males present, including Smyth. The incident was captured on CCTV and witnessed by residents including an elderly woman.

All five males were charged with an offence under the Public Order Act, namely using or threatening unlawful violence. They all admitted the offence and appeared for sentence today – almost three years after the incident.

Defence counsel for all but Smyth were spared the need for mitigation after judge Sean Morris said that all the defendants would be receiving 12-month conditional discharges for the offence.

However, as Smyth’s co-defendants walked free from court, he remained in the dock to be sentenced for the attempted robbery, carrying a knife and two counts of assaulting police officers during the incident in June 2023, all of which he admitted.

14 previous offences


Before sentence, Ms Clarke reminded the court of Smyth’s six previous convictions for 14 offences including carrying a knife, public disorder, battery and racially aggravated threatening behaviour.

Defence barrister Kristina Goodwin said that Smyth, a former Harrogate College student, had mental-health issues and traits of an anti-social personality disorder.

She added that Smyth, who had once been involved with the Sea Cadets and gained a Prince’s Trust award at college, had endured a difficult childhood and turned to alcohol and drugs to cope. He had been using cocaine “for a few years” and the drug abuse had resulted in him starting to get into trouble by 2020.

She said that Smyth, of Pannal Green, had been remanded in custody since his arrest in June last year, which was the equivalent of 16 months’ jail time already deemed served.

Judge Mr Morris, the Recorder of York, told Smyth he was “so lucky you didn’t kill someone” in the attempted knifepoint robbery.

He added:

“Knives are the scourge of the city streets at the moment and you would have been up for murder (if the attack had been fatal). You should hang your head in shame.”


Handing Smyth a two-year jail sentence, he told the teenager he already had a “nasty” record for one so young.

However, Smyth will only spend half that sentence behind bars, less the time he had already spent on remand, before being released on prison licence.




Read more:



  • Man admits supplying cocaine after police raid at Ripon pub 

  • Harrogate paedophile who had 32,000 indecent images jailed for two years