6 days Ago By [email protected] (Tom Mack)
Pharmacy staff ran out screaming from an aggressive customer who pulled out a large knife before grabbing a variety of drugs from behind the counter. Mitchell Williams, who would later climb on the building's roof, had gone into Vision Pharmacy in Leicester's Narborough Road in August this year demanding drugs. Leicester Crown Court heard on Friday (December 13), that after staff refused to give him prescription medication he became agitated.
Then when they tried to stop him getting behind the counter he became aggressive. Court heard the 999 call made by a male employee to the operator from Leicestershire Police . In it, female staff members could be heard screaming after Williams pulled out the knife as the call was taking place.
READ MORE: Lifetime ban for paedophile Leicestershire teacher who ‘groomed extremely vulnerable’ children In between talking to the operator the male pharmacy employee could be heard shouting to the other staff, "Everyone out, he has a knife". Judge Steven Evans, after hearing the recording, said: "I can hear on the 999 call they were unsurprisingly terrified when he produced a large knife." After grabbing diazepam - also known as Valium - and other drugs from the pharmacy shelves, 25-year-old Williams went into the back, climbed the stairs in the building and went out onto the pharmacy's roof .
It was here where he shouted abuse - including racist comments - to people who tried to urge him to come down. The incident, whuch happened on Friday, August 16, led to Narborough Road, in the West End of Leicester , being completely closed to traffic while the officers and Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service dealt with the incident. Police managed to get Williams to throw the knife from the roof, as well as a pair of scissors and other items before he was arrested.
Court heard Williams, previously of Pinfold Gate, Loughborough , had been in custody since the incident and also had 33 previous offences on his record, most of which invovled dishonesty and included the burglary of a pharmacy. Katya Saudek, representing Williams, said her client had already lost his grandfather and uncle in 2024 and that six days before the incident his mother had taken her own life from a drugs overdose - something he tried to replicate while the Narborough Road incident was developing. Ms Saudek said: "This is a highly unusual case.
This was a serious attempt on his own life in the context of his mother having committed suicide six days earlier." She said Williams blamed himself for his mother's death and did not mean to distress pharmacy staff during the incident. She said: "He didn't mean to cause them any harm.
He hopes now they're not frightened to go to work. He didn't mean to cause them the distress he did. He was so consumed by his own grief he just lost all sight of how to cope.
" Ms Saudek said that after the incident Williams was more determined than ever to stay away from heroin and not fall foul of addiction like his mother. She said: "He realises he needs to stop the addiction that has plagued him. He's still got most of his life ahead of him.
He needs to build a life and start doing the right thing. For his mother there was no going back. For him there is still time.
" She asked the judge to suspend the jail term so her client could begin building his new life. The court also had a psychiatrist's report stating Williams was suffering from "complex post-traumatic stress disorder" and that the motivation for the offence was probably guilt about his mother's death. Despite Ms Saudek's pleas, Judge Evans said the distress Williams caused and the extent of his previous convictions made a prison sentence inevitable.
He said: "I anticipate the people who work in the chemists are not highly paid and having to experience this they were frightened and they were distressed. "It won't have been something they brushed off over their mid-morning tea. These sorts of experiences stay with people for a long time.
You've been in a lot of trouble recently and the courts have given you lots of opportunities with community orders and suspended sentences." Williams, who had pleaded guilty to robbery and having a knife in public , was jailed for 22 months. Leicestershire Police arrived and managed to get him , and later arrested him.
Williams later pleaded guilty to robbery and having a knife in public . "He took 22 tablets while the incident was ongoing and this was a serious attempt on his own life in the context of his mother having committed suicide six days earlier." suicide.
She said Williams and his mother had been living homeless on the streets, both addicted to heroin, and he had "engineered" a falling-out with his mother to force her to move back to her own mother's address. become like his mother, who was an addict for 25 years.
