Swindon reacts to sentencing after town centre kidnap attempt |
The sentencing of a Sudanese man who tried to kidnap a teenager in Swindon’s town centre sparked a lot of discussion.
For this offence, 27-year-old Abdulmawal Ibrahim Adam, of Stainer Street, was sentenced to a custodial period of four years and one month and he will serve two years and 11 months on an extended licence period, totalling seven years.
At around 9.30pm on March 6, he approached the victim in Princes Street near Fleming Way in the town centre as she was walking home from work.
CCTV footage shows the moment passerby and bus passengers intervened and chased him off after he grabbed the young woman.
Adam then ran off down Princes Street, where he tried engaging with another woman and attempted to follow her before she got away from him.
He came to the UK in September 2023, driving a dinghy described during the court proceedings as “overcrowded", and he served seven months in prison after pleading guilty to arriving in the UK without valid entry clearance at Canterbury Crown Court on November 23, 2023.
In mitigation,