Charges dropped
Josh Lowe after being hit by broken glass
The man charged with perpetrating a vicious assault against two Exeter College students in January this year has had all the charges against him dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. Martin Fenn, 26, was scheduled to appear before Oxford Crown Court on 13th July, having been charged by police with Actual Bodily Harm and Malicious Wounding in May this year.
But the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges on 8th July because the Crown Prosecutors did not believe there was a, “realistic prospect of a conviction”. The two students, Josh Lowe and Jon Knott, were walking along Ship Street on their way from Exeter College to the Purple Turtle nightclub at 11.40 pm on the night of Friday 21st January and stopped to write in the dust on the back of a van parked outside QI Private Members’ Club.
As they wrote the words ‘Jesus Loves to Rave’ in the dirt on the van’s rear window, Knott’s head was thrust through the window from behind and the shattered glass exploded into Lowe’s face leaving him with horrific facial injuries and permanent scarring. The day after the incident, the students told The Oxford Student that the police, “arrived incredibly quickly”.
Fenn, the owner of the van, was immediately arrested on suspicion of causing Grievous Bodily Harm, held overnight in the cells and bailed to return to St Aldate’s Police Station on 26th February. Lowe was taken by ambulance to the Accident and Emergency Department of the John Radcliffe hospital, treated for serious facial injuries to the left side of his face and discharged at 3am. The doctors informed him that the scarring would be permanent but that it would fade over time.
When The Oxford Student visited the scene of the incident the morning after it occurred, the area around the van on Ship Street was still strewn with broken glass while a long trail of blood led back up towards Turl Street. The van had also been issued with a penalty notice for parking illegally.
After returning to the police for further questioning, Fenn was eventually charged with committing the offences of Actual Bodily Harm and Malicious Wounding and the case file was handed over to the Crown Prosecution Services. The Oxford Student understands that the evidence disclosed by the police stated that Fenn believed Knott and Lowe were vandalising his van.
The law of self-defence says that a defendant, “cannot always calculate to a nicety the amount of force he is allowed to use in any given circumstance”. The defence of self-defence can be used to secure a complete acquittal in a criminal trial.
Jonathan Stone, the Crown’s Chief Prosecutor for Oxfordshire explained to The Oxford Student why the service decided to drop the charges: “The Crown Prosecution Service decided that weighing up all of the evidence inter alia - the lack of use of weapons and the lack of independent witnesses meant that it was extremely unlikely that a jury would find beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Fenn intentionally assaulted Mr Knott,” Mr Stone said.
The students’ reaction to the news was one of disappointment. Josh Lowe told The Oxford Student, “It seems the police didn’t do a great job collecting evidence. There were people who saw it happen, and I gave the police the mobile number of one of them; he hasn’t heard anything from the police.”
5th Oct 2005