On 23:50 on 30 June Aman arrived in Barry Road and parked a few doors down from his mother’s home. He had been working during the day before spending time with his wife and four-year-old daughter.
Marcus Staniforth and the second defendant had been drinking alcohol for several hours before arriving at a house on the same road where they continued to drink.
The trial heard the second defendant had behaved in a “volatile and aggressive manner” earlier in the day, “confronting a train conductor” and “later threatening” Staniforth.
It was the younger of the two, looking down from a bedroom window, who noticed Aman in his car in the street below and decided to attack him. Initially he took a hammer from the house but the weapon was taken off him.
The youth started hurling racist abuse at Aman and, after unsuccessfully trying to get in to the passenger side of the car, went around to the driver’s side.
Aman came out of the car and began defending himself against a barrage of punches that were thrown first by the 16-year-old and then Staniforth who had joined the attack.
Several neighbours told the trial how they were alarmed by shouting in the street, in an attack described as “relentless” by one witness, with the boys behaving like a “pack of animals”.
Staniforth was seen running back into the house, returning 15 seconds later armed with a large kitchen knife.
Neighbours, who gave evidence during the trial, said Staniforth swung the knife “multiple times”.