Man spat at police officer, injured man with brick and threatened to ‘smash man’s head in’

Darren Edwards, aged 43, who currently lives in a tent in an ‘isolated part’ of Telford, threw a brick through a taxi window, hurting the driver and a passenger.

Edwards appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday where he admitted three counts of criminal damage, two counts of assault by beating, one count of racially aggravated disorder, one count of assaulting a police officer and another charge of failing to surrender to magistrates in Telford.

Eleanor Peart, prosecuting, said on July 9 at the offices of the Maninplace charity’s homeless shelter in Octavia Court, Telford, he was verbally abusive to a woman and made threats to her boyfriend. He used a racially offensive word to several Asian males and made threats to kill the woman’s boyfriend. At 1.45pm on the same day he spat through a police station custody window on to the stab vest of police officer Oliver Norman.

The court was also told that Edwards went to the Telford offices of Maninplace and damaged property there. On July 11 he used a brick to destroy the rear window of a taxi, injuring innocent taxi driver Stanley Onuoha and passenger Ben Green.

Ms Peart told the judge that Edwards threw the brick once but it bounced off the taxi, so he threw it again and it broke the window, bounced off a seat and hit Mr Green, injuring his lips.

At the same time he had been making threats to “smash his head in” and “kill him off”, directed at Mr Green.