Life for car park menace

A teenager received two life sentences yesterday after a judge described him as a danger to the public. Leeds Crown Court heard how 18- year-old Robert Devonshire dropped a lump of concrete on to a 64-year- old man from the top of a multi-storey car park just three months after being released from a young offenders' institution for an identical attack.

Devonshire was sentenced to four years in September 1995 for dropping a 13-pound scaffolding pole onto eight-year-old Simon Teece from the top of the car park at the Ridings Shopping Centre in Wakefield. Devonshire was released on 15 November 1996. On 24 February this year, he went back to the same car park and dropped a three-pound lump of concrete which hit and slightly injured safety officer Bernard Atkinson.

Judge Brian Walsh said: "I am satisfied that you are a dangerous young man. Doctors have described you as ... too switched off and remote to be recognised as treatable."