Ziyad Mahmood staggered into a shop in Oxford brandishing a kitchen knife and yelling. “I’m going to kill you. Then he plunged the five-inch blade into his own thigh.
The 22-year-old was given a suspended sentence at Oxford Crown Court last Monday where Court Recorder [Magistrate] Antonio Bueno called it a “bizarre and unusual” case. He told eh defendant: “I must express my horror that innocent persons should have been subjected to the kind of behavior in which you indulged on that occasion.
Mahmood has “little recollection of his behavior” and offered no motive for his actions, his lawyer, Nick Cotter, told the court.
Mahmood pleaded guilty to affray and having a bladed article.
Recorder Bueno gave Mahmood a 12-month jail term, suspended for 18 months, with 200 hours of unpaid community work.
The judge said he had “some misgivings” about suspending the sentence and told the defendant: “You must regard yourself as extremely fortunate. I have to think you were suffering some kind of aberration, that you lost your mind in some way that was wholly uncharacteristic. You have escaped prison by the skin of your teeth.”
Explaining the case, prosecutor Jane Davis said Mahmood was led out of the store after stabbing himself and a female shop assistant “indicated she was not afraid”.
Defense attorney Cotter said his client, who came to England from Iran six years ago and now holds a British passport, was friends with the shopkeeper. Cotter said Mahmood “would wish formally, through me, to apologize for his actions and to- tally unwarranted behavior.”
Cotter said Mahmood only “drinks every six months” and had consumed a “large amount of vodka” that night.
He added: “There’s no information as to why on earth he committed this offence.”
Last month, 34-year-old Martyn Shorter was jailed for three years and four months after he burst into a store in the very same Oxford neighborhood with a machete and threatened the staff.