A TAXI passenger has told how he was left with a fractured skull after being beaten by a baseball bat-wielding cabbie.
Adrian Dubiel was hit twice with the bat in a Newcastle side-street just minutes after being picked up from a night out.
Doctors later diagnosed the 28-year-old – who spent six days in hospital – with a depressed fracture of the skull.
Today, private hire driver Amran Khan is starting a three-and-a-half year prison sentence after being convicted of attacking Mr Dubiel and hitting another customer in similar circumstances months earlier.
Mr Dubiel told The Sentinel how he flagged down Khan's taxi to go home on June 15, after the rest of his friends went for a curry.
He said: "I jumped in and said 'Madeley for a tenner mate?' He said 'I will show you a ride for a tenner'. Then he sped off to The Brampton. I said 'You're going the wrong way', and he stopped and told me to get out.
"I was a bit bemused and just wanted to go home. I was going to walk back to town to get another taxi when he came up behind me and clubbed me on the back of the head with a baseball bat, and again on my back.
"I didn't realise what had happened until I turned round and saw him going back to the car with the bat. I was in shock – there had been no argument, it was completely unprovoked."
Mr Dubiel, who now lives at Westbury Park, went to the police station and later had nine stitches in his head. His fractured skull was diagnosed three days later.
Father-of-three Khan, of Rushton Road, Cobridge, was convicted last month of assaulting Philip Booth, from Biddulph, on February 23 last year and causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Dubiel with intent on June 15.
The court heard Mr Booth – who had agreed to pay £20 to get him to Biddulph – was struck several times with a baseball bat after Khan demanded more money.
But Ian Metcalfe, mitigating, told Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court that 31-year-old Khan still expresses his innocence.
Recorder Martin Wasik yesterday jailed Khan for three years for attacking Mr Dubiel and six months to run consecutively for assaulting Mr Booth.
He told Khan: "The public are entitled to expect they will be safe when they get in a taxi late at night and offer to pay the fare home.
"In the pre-sentence report you say both matters were a case of mistaken identity and it was not you.
"On the evidence which was presented at trial I have no doubt the convictions were correct."
11 years ago
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