(Image: West Yorkshire Police)
A COURT has heard how a man held a prisoner, tied him up, beat him with a baseball bat, and screamed: “Do you want to die tonight?”
Hamza Hussain is now beginning a six-year jail sentence.
Bradford Crown Court heard how 27-year-old Hussain, who suffers from serious mental health issues including schizophrenia, first chased, punched, and kicked his victim in the street near their home Crofton Court, an independent living space for vulnerable people, on Crofton Road in Heaton.
Later the same day, he confronted the man and asked if he had called the police.
The man said he had not.
Victim attacked in flat
At 11.55pm, the man went to Hussain’s flat where Hussain used a large baseball bat to hit him in the legs.
He then tied him up, asked if he wanted to die, and even made a video call whilst the incident was taking place.
Hussain untied his victim’s feet and told him to walk slowly out of the flat before assaulting him again.
The victim, his hands still tied, managed to run to his own flat where a neighbour called police.
Man was tasered weeks before incident
Following the incident, the victim said he was paranoid when he went out and suffered from nightmares in which he was being attacked with baseball bats.
Prosecutor Nicola Hoskins told the court that, six weeks prior to the false imprisonment of his neighbour, Hussain was seen by police waving a knife about whilst telling them, “Shoot me, I want to die.”
When he refused to put the knife down, he was tasered.
He later told police he was suffering from schizophrenia.
Man jailed
The court heard that Hussain had eight previous convictions for 13 offences dating back to 2014 including armed robbery, making threats with an offensive weapon in public, and battery.
Mitigating for Hussain, barrister Rodney Ferm said there had been a nine-year break in his offending, and that his life had been afflicted by serious mental ill health.
He said Hussain had expressed how sorry he was for the attack on his neighbour and said: “He feels nothing other than shame and remorse and feels appalled that he could have acted in that way.
“But act in that way he did, and he knows he must take the consequences for it.”
Her Honour Judge Kirstie Watson handed Hussain 54 months’ imprisonment.
He will be subject to a 10-year restraining order banning him from any contact with his victim.
Addressing Hussain, who appeared via video link from HMP Leeds, she said: “You suffer from schizophrenia and you have, over the years, been in and out of institutions to support you and try to assist you and stabilise your mental health.
“As a result of your ill health … you are somebody who has suffered from both isolation and loneliness, which will have no doubt impacted upon the way you have managed situations that you have fund yourself in.”