A teen who stabbed another boy in front of terrified children at The O2 Arena has had his sentence reduced.
Caydon Hutchinson was one of three teens who entered Cineworld at the O2 in Greenwich with their hoods up on February 22 last year.
When they spotted another youth they had “issues” with, one of Hutchinson’s friends pulled out a 15-inch knife and stabbed the victim multiple times while Hutchinson and Simeon Olagundoye kicked and punched at the boy.
At one point the knife fell to the floor, at which point Olagundoye picked it up and handed it to Hutchinson who stabbed the victim again.
The victim was stabbed at least four times but survived the attack.
Hutchinson was sentenced to three years and seven months in custody.
At Woolwich Crown Court in March this year,Judge Jonathan Mann KC said: “It was an outrageous thing to do that could have caused the death of an individual, the fact that it didn’t is more luck than judgement.”
But Hutchinson’s sentence has now been reduced to three years as appeal judges noted that the stabbing was “out of character”.
On October 3, Lord Justice Holroyde said: “At the time of the offending the appellant was a young man of good character with no previous convictions.
“Since the offences there have been no further incidents of suspected criminality; the appalling behaviour of which he was guilty on February 22, 2023, appears to have been out of character.”
Further mitigation which appeal judges took into consideration included that Hutchinson had a “somewhat unstable upbringing” but “had a promising future”, and that he had responded positively to a Youth Offending Team intervention.
Lord Justice Holroyde said: “In our judgment, this personal mitigation ought to have been addressed expressly by the judge and ought to have led to some adjustment in the sentence. The judge's failure to do so amounted to an error of principle.”
Hutchinson’s co-defendants – Olagundoye and a 17-year-old boy – were sentenced to four years and three years and two months in custody respectively in March.
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