Man jailed for life after he tried to kill teenage boy outside Birmingham mosque

Dominic Palmer, 29.

A man has been jailed for life after he stabbed a teenage boy outside a mosque in Birmingham and knifed a second woman hours later.

Dominic Palmer, 29, stabbed the 15-year-old boy in the skull after going out looking for victims on Monday 30 October 2017.

He also knifed Mitzie Harper, who was in her 50s, just a few hours after the first attack.

A jury at Birmingham Crown Court took just an hour to find Palmer who is from Small Heath, guilty of two charges of attempted murder.

After the verdicts, Stephen Linehan QC described the impact of the attacks on the victims.

He said: “He has received no estimate as to how much of a recovery he will make over that period of time. He has a love of cricket which he is good at.”

Mr Linehan said, because of his injuries, the teenager had to miss the winter indoor cricket season but was hoping to get back to it this summer.

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“That is the sort of young man that he is,” he said.

Mr Linehan said Miss Harper had suffered grave psychological damage.

The court heard previously that the defendant left his flat in the early hours armed with a knife and came across the teenager outside the Idaara Maarif-e-Islam mosque in Herbert Road, Small Heath.

He stabbed the boy a number of times before returning to his home.

Palmer then went out again and attacked his second victim in Cyril Road as she was walking to work early in the morning.

Police later arrested him at his flat and recovered a blood-stained knife and clothes.

Suspicions the first attack was racially motivated were later discounted with police believing the pair were “simply in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

Detective Inspector Richard Marsh said: “These were savage attacks; without intervention of members of the public and medical assistance both incidents could have resulted in fatal consequences.”

The judge discounted Palmer’s history of mental illness as a reason for the attacks, Mr Marsh said.

Georgina Davies, from the CPS described the stabbings as “unprovoked and frenzied”.

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