Mail: Family of father stabbed to death by three thugs is denied compensation… because he tried to fight back

(But there’s more—and less—to the story than indicated by the Mail’s headline, as you will see if you read the whole entry.)

James P. sent this, from VFR’s main source on the continuing self-immolation of Britain, the Mail:

Family of father stabbed to death by three thugs is denied compensation… because he tried to fight back
By Wil Longbottom
10th April 2009

The family of a man who was stabbed to death by teenage thugs after he asked them to keep the noise down have been denied compensation—because he tried to fight off his killers.

Kevin Johnson, 22, was brutally murdered by the gang who invited him to ‘meet Mr Stanley’ during a confrontation outside his home moments before plunging a blade into his chest, arm and back.

The young father collapsed a few feet from his front door whilst the trio—aged 19, 16 and 17—ran off in ‘triumphant mood’ before stabbing their second victim a short distance away.

But after applying for a maximum 11,000 pounts in compensation Mr Johnson’s family have been told that they do not meet the criteria as he tried to fight off the gang who took his life.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has twice rejected John Johnson’s case. They ruled that the demolition worker had ‘significantly’ contributed to his own death.

Mr Johnson, 57, will now make a last-ditch plea before an independent tribunal this month—almost two years after his son was murdered on his doorstep on the Pennywell estate in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.

‘I’m livid. They’ve got no empathy or any regard for us,’ he said yesterday. ‘The 11,000 pounds is all they value a person’s life at. And then you have to fight for it. It’s absolutely disgusting.

‘Obviously they just want to keep the costs down for the Government. The criminals get all sorts of help and that’s called human rights. Yet we don’t seem to have any human rights.’

According to the CICA the parents, child, husband, wife or partner of a person who died as a result of a violent crime can claim up to 11,000 pounds for the loss of their life.

Yet that figure is dwarfed by the amount paid to an RAF typist last year who injured her thumb at work and was awarded half a million pounds by the Ministry of Defence.

Mr Johnson, who works as a taxi driver, said his case simply highlighted how badly victims’ families are treated by the Government.

He said he and his wife, Kath, 59, their son’s fiancee Adele Brett, 28, and their one year old son, Chaise, were condemned to a life sentence after his death in May 2007. The rejection for compensation had only added to their pain, he added.

Recent figures showed that inmates in British prisons were awarded 6.5million pounds for injuries between 2005 and 2007, for claims including assaults, medical negligence, unlawful detention and sports injuries.

Drug-addicted prisoners at some jails received compensation because their human rights were breached when they were denied drugs such as heroin and substitute substances.

Mr Johnson was stabbed to death after he and his fiancee returned home from a night out on May 19, 2007. Woken by raised voices outside he went down to ask the teenagers to keep the noise down.

The gang beckoned the father over with their hands, enticing him to come forward. Then they surrounded him. One pulled out a Stanley knife and repeatedly stabbed him until he fell to the floor.

As he lay dying the gang ran off and celebrated by damaging parked cars before stabbing a second man in the chest. The killers—Dean Curtis, 19, Tony Hawkes, 17, and Jordan Towers, 16—were later jailed for life.

Last night, the CICA said it could not comment on an individual case.

However, a spokesman said: ‘We consider all available evidence in reaching our decisions, including relevant witness statements. If this evidence shows that a victim’s behaviour contributed significantly to the incident they were involved in then we have to take that into account—but there are safeguards built in to our process.

‘If an applicant does not think their case was assessed fairly, they can apply to have it reviewed. If the applicant remains unhappy after the review they can have an appeal heard by an independent tribunal.’

LA replied to James P.:

The story doesn’t make sense. The account of his stabbing does not indicate even that he resisted. It doesn’t supply the factual basis of the denial of the compensation. There must be something there, one assumes the compensation board is not lying through its teeth, but the reporter doesn’t supply that. Nor does the reporter acknowledge that his summary of the killing does not include any resistance by the victim. This is below imcompetent journalism. maybe he had his eye on the Mail’s “Femail” section while he was writing it.

James P. replies:

This is a somewhat more coherent account. I think what really happened is the CICA is denying the money on the grounds that he didn’t have to come out of his house and confront the three youths, so he wasn’t really “innocent.”

Quoting the news story from the Sunderland Echo:

A teenager has told a court of the moments leading up to Wearside dad Kevin Johnson realising he had been stabbed. The 17-year-old, who cannot be named, is one of three teenagers accused of murdering the 22-year-old during a confrontation outside his home in Pennywell, Sunderland, in the early hours of May 19.

The youth, who had been drinking wine and vodka in the hours before the killing, told jurors at Newcastle Crown Court how he had been arguing with pal Dean Curtis as they and their 16-year-old friend walked past Mr Johnson’s home.

He said: “A man came to the upstairs window and said ‘keep your noise down or I’ll come out there and punch all three of you all over’. “Dean replied, he said ‘you couldn’t do nowt’.

“I didn’t say nowt, me.”

The youth said Mr Johnson came out of his home and a fight broke out during which he was punched by Mr Johnson.

He said: “Kevin Johnson was on top of Dean, they were fighting and flinging punches at each other. They were rolling about the floor.

“I think Kevin was getting up first, they were spaced from each other, they were apart from each other.

“I just pulled his top up and said he had been stabbed, Kevin Johnson. “He said ‘I’ve been stabbed, I’ve been stabbed’, he said it twice.”

LA replies:

Thanks for sending this. I don’t know what the rules on compensation for murder are, but clearly the victim here was not simply an innocent victim attacked out of the blue, and the Mail in order to create a sensational story, “family of victim refused compensation because victim fought back,” covered up the victim’s own actions. With the inclusion of the victim’s actions, provided by the Sunderland Echo, the sensationalist story is lost.

My joke about the reporter being confused about the facts in the case because he had his eye on the Mail’s Femail section has a measure of symbolic truth. The Mail every day presents an intensely alarmist account of Britain’s decline, emphasizing such things as rampant savage crime with slap-on-the-wrist punishments, mass immigration of unassimilables, and government subsidized housing for terrorists, all of which makes the Mail seem conservative, alongside abundant sauced up accounts of celebrity sex, normalizing a stunningly decadent image of Britain. Does it occur to any of the Mail’s editors and readers that a completely sexually libertine society such as is celebrated by the Mail’s Femail section will also be a society lacking the self-discipline to stop rampant savage crime with slap-on-the-wrist punishments, mass immigration of unassimilables, and government subsidized housing for terrorists?

LA continues:

The Mail’s method of grabbing readers is summed up by Gail Wynand, the unprincipled tabloid newspaper publisher in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead: “Make them itch, and make them cry, and you’ve got them.”

LA continues:

By the way, I’m not saying that the Mail’s stories on immigration and crime are all unreliable; I’m pointing to the fundamental lack of principle in the Mail, that it uses both British decline and vast amounts of sex to grab readers—spreading, with one hand, the very libertinism that it decries with the other.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 11, 2009 07:39 AM | Send