Jail sentence is ‘an insult’

And now police say prosecutors have lodged an appeal as they deem sentences handed down to be too lenient.

Last Thursday, Mohammed Nazakat Alam, 25, was sent to prison for 21 months for the manslaughter of Jack Carter.

Leeds Crown Court was told that Alam only punched Mr Carter once, but that ultimately killed him.

After the hearing, Mr Carter’s sister, Amanda Athey, said: “I know it was one punch and that explains the sentence, but in my 44 years I have never thrown a punch at anybody. But that bloke did, and because of that punch Jack died. It’s an insult to me, my family and to Jack.”

During the sentencing, prosecutor Christopher Tehrani said racial tensions flared up in Thornhill Lees after an alleged aggravated burglary in Victoria Road last August.

Two days later, Mr Carter and his girlfriend, Melanie Boocock, were leaving a friend’s house in the same street when Ms Boocock started hurling racist abuse at a local man.

Another man told Ms Boocock to shut up and she threw a punch at him, prompting a group of Asian men, including Alam, of Beckett Lane, Dewsbury Moor, to step in, injuring Mr Carter.

Nisar Shah, who lived in Victoria Road at the time, came out of his house and stood on Mr Carter’s head, but stayed until paramedics arrived and provided toilet roll to clean him up.

Shah, 40, admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm and was given a six month jail term suspended for two years and 120 hours unpaid work.

Three days after the attack, Mr Carter’s family decided to turn off his life support machine at Dewsbury and District Hospital. He would have turned 40 on Tuesday.

Mrs Athey said her brother had struggled with heroin addiction for 10 years but had been clean for four years and was getting his life back on track.

She was one of the first to find out about her brother being attacked, as she was at her cousin’s house in nearby Parker Road at the time.

She said: “For three days we had to sit and watch him die.”

Mr Carter was living in Bretton Street, Savile Town, when he died, but spent most of his childhood in Thornhill

His mother, Jackie, said her son was a ‘Jack the lad’. “He was very well known and well liked. More than 200 people came to his funeral,” she said.

She said the legal system was ‘disgusting’ for giving her son’s killer such a short sentence.