Luis Vicente jailed for shooting youth worker and boy
Gunman a ‘significant risk’, court told
Published: 09 September, 2010
by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
A GUNMAN convicted of shooting a youth worker and a 16-year-old boy has been told he must serve at least seven-and-a-half years in prison.
Luis Vicente, who turns 24 tomorrow (Friday), shot youth worker Kito Soki and an unnamed teenager outside the Queen’s Crescent Community Centre in January after pointing his gun at the temple of a man with whom he was “in conflict”.
Mr Soki, who was hit in the leg as he tried to break up a fight between Vicente and the other man outside the youth club, only returned to work at the Gospel Oak club last month, while the teenager had to have bullet fragments removed from his head.
Vicente, from Acton Street in King’s Cross, had been visiting his son in the area when he spotted the man sitting outside the youth club, Blackfriars Crown Court heard on Friday.
Vicente was found guilty of grievous bodily harm with intent, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, and driving while disqualified. He was given two seven-and-a-half-year sentences and an additional month for the driving offence, all to run concurrently.
“It seems to me it is beyond question you pose a significant risk to members of the public,” His Honour Judge Henry Blacksell QC told Vincente.
“You held the gun to that man’s head shouting and being obviously aggressive and intending to terrify that person.”
The judge noted that had it not been for “incredible luck,” Vicente would have been sat in a murder trial and would have, in all likelihood, been sentenced to life in prison. Instead, the bullets he fired into the crowd missed by centimetres causing life-threatening injuries.
Vicente’s mother and aunt, who were sitting in the public gallery, collapsed in tears as the sentence was read out, while his friends, including Fazer – Richard Rawson, from the Camden Town pop group N-Dubz – stormed out of court.
Vicente’s defence counsel Michael Newport had earlier described how his client didn’t want to be “another cliché” or “just another young black man living in London with a son who can’t really say where his daddy is because his daddy is in prison”.
Mr Newport told how, since his incarceration, Vicente had been a model prisoner.
“He realises it was a stupid mistake that will change the course of his life and he would like to say publicly how sorry he is,” Mr Newport said.
Judge Blacksell said: “I hope you work towards making yourself a safer person when you are released.”