An asylum seeker who threatened a man with a snooker cue and skipped court to eat fish and chips has avoided jail.
Shkar Jamal was due to be sentenced at Poole Magistrates’ Court last month after admitting to threatening a victim with an offensive weapon, namely a snooker cue, in a public place on Old Christchurch Road, Bournemouth on May 6.
His case was however adjourned after he missed the hearing to eat fish and chips.
The 24-year-old was nowhere to be found when the case was called by the court usher, prompting a search party to be launched.
By the time he had returned to the building, another case had been called on and then the magistrates broke for lunch.
Due to a backlog of cases, the afternoon schedule was too full to hear his case and Jamal was allowed to leave the court on bail.
An interpreter who speaks Kurdish Sorani, the language spoken in Iraq and Kurdistan, had been booked for the sentencing.
Jamal was being housed at a hotel that has been converted into migrant accommodation at the time of the hearing.
Shkar Jamal received a community order and 100 hours of unpaid work upon returning to Poole Magistrates Court last week
|PA
Upon returning to the same court on Friday, October 24, Jamal received a community order and 100 hours of unpaid work.
Magistrates concluded a custodial sentence was not appropriate, saying he had made an "error of judgement" but had conducted himself "with dignity".
"You are still a relatively young man of previous good character and have had difficult personal circumstances," Magistrate chair Alan Bennett told Jamal.
"We are not unsympathetic to your position. Whilst you made an error of judgement, since then you have conducted yourself with dignity and that helps to rehabilitate yourself in the eyes of the law.
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Jamal earlier admitting to threatening a victim with a snooker cue, on Old Christchurch Road, Bournemouth
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Figures published at the end of last month show the crown court backlog in England and Wales had risen to a record number.
The data showed the open caseload was 78,329 at the end of June, up two per cent from 76,957 at the end of March, when the backlog passed 75,000 for the first time.
Open caseload refers to the number of outstanding cases.
It is also up 10 per cent from 70,893 a year earlier, according to Ministry of Justice figures.
Some 19,164 cases had been open for at least a year at the end of June, up 17 per cent from 16,378 a year earlier and the highest since current data began.