Sheffield man attacked teens with multi-tool for sitting on “his steps”

Jamie Circuit approached the 17-year-old students as they waited near the Banker's Draft pub, on the morning of October 12, last year, said prosecutor David Webster.

Muttering under his breath, he said: "These are my steps," and began shouting "Don't look at me."

He shouted abuse and told them to leave before punching his male victim several times in the face.

He pushed the young woman down the steps and ran off with her glasses, Mr Webster told the court on Wednesday.

When she ran after him and slapped his face, Circuit turned and punched her "forcefully and painfully" with his fists and the multi-tool, which contained a hammer and knives.

Members of the public stepped in to help, the glasses were dropped and the red-handled multi-tool was never recovered. The young woman was treated at hospital for a one and a half cms cut below her hairline.

Circuit later told police: "They're both grasses - they're out on my step. I sell on there. I asked them three times to move and they didn't move."

But when he was interviewed he denied being there.

Sheffield Crown Court heard he has 23 convictions for 44 offences, and was jailed for 16 months for section 20 wounding, in June 2016.

Katy Rafter, mitigating, said a psychiatric report confirmed Circuit was fit to plead, but he was finding prison difficult "not least because of his mental health problems."

He has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since he was 19, she said, and he relapsed into psychosis at the time.

“He felt strongly that the victims were encroaching on his step and he reacted to that,” Ms Rafter told the court.

Circuit, 30, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to common assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Judge Peter Kelson QC jailed him for 12 months, which means Circuit will be released in two months after the time he has already spent on remand is taken into account.

Read the latest cases from Sheffield Crown Court here.

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