A man who took revenge on a kebab shop after his girlfriend was jailed for being part of a racist mob which launched a drunken attack on it has himself now been sent to prison.
Gavin Mossop, 27, spent one night in prison for contempt of court after shouting at the judge as he jailed the 11 racists in February. And he was back at the city’s Crown Court yesterday for his own drunken racist attack on the takeaway in Carlisle.
Mossop, who lives with his mother in Highmoor Park, Wigton, was jailed for nine months after pleading guilty to charges of taking revenge and racially aggravated public disorder.
The court heard the case arose from an incident in May last year in which the racist mob – including former soldier Andrew Ryan – terrorised two cafe workers at the Manhattan Cafe, on Botchergate, at the end a drinking session to celebrate Ryan’s release from the prison sentence imposed on him for burning a copy of the Koran holy book, stolen from Carlisle Library, in the city centre.
The incident was caught by the shop’s CCTV cameras, which showed the gang massing outside before going in to gesticulate wildly and yell obscene and racist abuse at the workers.
The gang had targeted the café because they had heard a takeaway in the Botchergate area was at the centre of an investigation of the sexual grooming of girls. The suggestion that Manhattan Cafe staff were in any way linked to that investigation was entirely mistaken, and the two men the gang thought were Pakistani in fact came from Turkey.
One of those jailed for what the judge described as “feral” and “disgraceful” behaviour, was Mossop’s girlfriend, who was sentenced to 12 months in custody. And yesterday the court heard how, less than a month after the prison sentences were imposed, he had gone into the Manhattan Café swearing and shouting abuse at the staff.
He told the Turkish man behind the counter that, because his girlfriend had been sent to prison, he would burn the place down and “cut people” in the shop.
Prosecutor Alan Lovett told the court that the café worker was now frightened to go to work, thinking something like it might happen again.
Jailing Mossop for nine months, Judge Peter Hughes QC told him: “It is totally unacceptable to use racist abuse.”
In February Carlisle’s senior Judge, Paul Batty QC, jailed the 11 members for a total of nearly 15 years.