Teens jailed for sadistic attack in Dewsbury Moor

Daniel Grace and Shauna Smith were given indeterminate jail terms to protect the public when they appeared at Leeds Crown Court this morning.

The pair, who were 16 and 18 at the time of the attack, tortured their victim after wrongly accusing him of stealing from them.

They punched him to the ground, tied his hands and feet with belts, beat him around the head, stabbed him in the thigh with a kitchen knife and cut the Achilles’ heel tendon on both his feet with a hacksaw.

They then gagged him by putting a sock in his mouth and put him in a sleeping bag which they bound up.

The duo had been taking cannabis and mephedrone, also known as MCAT.

The boy had turned up at Grace’s home in School Crescent, Dewsbury Moor, on June 14 last year looking for his friend.

He was only released when other people turned up to the flat and untied him.

Prosecutor Peter Moulson said the boy needed nine staples in his right heel and 18 in his left where the tendon had been completely severed.

Both his legs were in casts for two weeks and the more severely injured leg was kept in a cast for 12 weeks. He was in a wheelchair for three weeks and needed six months of physiotherapy.

Grace, 19, and Smith, 17, of Rochester Road, Birstall, both pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and wounding with intent at an earlier hearing.

Robin Frieze, mitigating for Grace, said he had written a genuine letter of remorse and wanted to get help for his problems.

Andrew Dallas, mitigating for Smith, said she had a persistent record for minor violence but nothing involving weapons or such serious injuries.

He said she had an ‘extremely destabilised and fragmented’ family life but was a bright girl who was determined to change.

Judge James Spencer QC said the attack was ‘callous and sadistic’.

He said it was a mercy that the biy had not been more seriously injured.

He said pair would serve at least three years, minus 210 days already spent on remand, before they would be considered for parole.