A judge will hear evidence to decide whether a man who stopped drivers during widespread disorder in Middlesbrough to check if they were “white” or “English” was racially motivated.
Jake Wray, 23, of Seaton Street, Middlesbrough, has admitted violent disorder committed on August 4, when some of the worst violence seen in the town in recent years broke out.
He was due to be sentenced on Monday at Teesside Crown Court but Judge Francis Laird KC said he must hold a further hearing to determine whether the offence was racially aggravated.
Rachel Masters, prosecuting, said Wray, wearing a distinctive red top and a flag around his shoulders, stopped cars at a junction in the town centre and was caught on mobile phone footage asking drivers about the colour of their skin.
On the clip which was played in court, while he stood blocking traffic, Wray could be heard asking: “Are you white, are you English?”
Further clips showed him setting fire to a wheelie bin which was pushed towards police lines and helicopter video captured him interfering with a red hatchback which less than four minutes later burst into flames.
Ms Masters said the violent disorder charge was racially aggravated, meaning his sentence would be increased.
She said: “We submit that there was a high level of racial aggravation, the defendant was a member of a group promoting racial hostility and caused serious fear and distress throughout the community.”
The court heard Wray, who was subject to a suspended sentence for spitting on a police officer and carrying a blade at the time, handed himself in to police after a public appeal to track down troublemakers.
Ms Masters said Wray told police he was directing traffic to warn drivers that vehicles might be smashed up, and that he had been told to do so by someone in a balaclava who threatened him.
He also told police he was trying to get home that day but he could not as roads were closed.
Harry Crowson, defending, told the court he would need to speak to his client further about the ramifications of the offence being deemed racially aggravated.
Judge Laird said the matter could be investigated at a further hearing in the future, before he passed sentence.
The judge said: “It seems to me an important matter to determine whether … when vehicles were being stopped in the street and the ethnicity of drivers was being checked by those who were preventing their passage and people were shouting ‘Is the driver white?’ or words to that effect, Mr Wray’s actions were racially motivated, or whether, as he submits, he was simply seeking to warn drivers that if they continued in the road that their vehicles were in danger of being damaged.”
Wray’s partner Megan Davison, 24, and her mother Amanda Walton, 51, were jailed last week for their part in the trouble when they joined a violent mob on Parliament Road and attacked a car while they walked the family’s chow chow.
The same car was later set alight after Wray tampered with it.
Wray will be sentenced at a date to be set.
