A boy escaped being kidnapped from his school by two men who dressed as security guards in an elaborate plan to abduct him.
Tariq Alsamaan, 21 and Carlton Tebbs, 22, spent weeks discussing a plan to snatch a child on Skype before putting on disguises and luring a pupil from his classroom at Wellacre Academy , in Flixton .
But despite this the pair have been spared jail, after a judge accepted that it had been a ‘prank’ led by Alsamaan, a computer game obsessive who wanted to play the hero in real life.
Minshull Street Crown Court heard Alsamaan, who was studying law at Manchester University, and Tebbs, a shelf-stacker who had travelled from Scotland, created IDs in false names for a company called Rapid Security and wore high-visibility vests.
On November 29, 2016, they walked into the boys’ school and named a child who they said be handed over to them.
Alsamaan told reception staff at Wellacre the boy had been bullied and from now on he would be escorted to and from school by security officers.
The confused youngster, who insisted he had not been bullied, was pulled from his classroom and beckoned by the two men as he approached reception.
Suspicious staff called the boy’s parents and told them about the visitors before escorting the fake security guards off the site.
The pair were cornered by the lad’s horrified father as he was making his way to the school.
Police arrived moments later and arrested the duo, who insisted at first that they were genuine security guards - and then claimed it had simply been a ‘prank’.
The pair were each convicted of attempting to abduct a child in a trial. But they both got suspended sentences after the judge accepted it had been an ‘elaborate prank’.
The court heard pair had made an aborted attempt to take a child at the same school five days earlier.
But they left when the name of the boy they asked for wasn’t on the roll, prosecutor Huw Edwards said.
Students recalled the pair approaching them in a field to ask about a particular student.
They said they didn’t know the student but volunteered the name of another pupil with a similar name.
The pair then returned to snatch that boy, with Alsamaan telling staff: “Back again but now I have the correct name.”
Police checked CCTV which showed Alsamaan had also been to Flixton Girls’ School, Trafford General Hospital and a local golf club in his hi-viz vest.
It was claimed on Alsamaan’s behalf by his barrister that he had been bullied at school, and would have liked someone like a security guard to look after him at school.
He claimed he liked to play heroic versions of himself in online fantasy games to escape his ‘low self-image’ in the real world.
Alsamaan was the ‘ring-leader’ of the plot and recruited Tebbs, a fellow gamer to it.
Kay Driver, defending both, said Alsmaan’s ‘enthusiasm for pranks’ had ‘got out of control’.
“In dressing up as a security guard, he felt somehow more important, someone respected and someone who could be a hero for someone else”, she said.
But she insisted there was no ‘sinister motive’ to the plot, which she accepted ‘caused disruption to the school and the surrounding schools and concern amongst the staff.’
Judge Lawton said the pair had been ‘conceited and arrogant’ in a trial that cost ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’, although he conceded Alsamaan had since expressed remorse for his actions.
“I have arrived at the conclusion it was an elaborate prank they thought somehow was going to be amusing but it wasn’t remotely amusing for anybody involved”, the judge said.
“The parents were absolutely horrified when they heard someone, a private security guard, was trying to abduct their child. They weren’t to know the sinister motive that might have lay behind that.”
The judge continued: “You were not Dom Joly or Fonejacker. What you did was social mayhem on a grand scale.”
The judge said Alsamaan had written a ‘heart-felt letter’ expressing his remorse but Tebbs still believes he ‘did nothing wrong’.
The parents of the young boy they attempted to abduct watched from the public gallery as Alsamaan, of Winchester Road in Stretford , who never completed his law degree, and Tebbs, of Inglis Road in Invergordon, Scotland, were each given a six-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to carry out 300 hours unpaid work each. Neither has previous convictions.
After the case, Det Con Amanda Tootill told the M.E.N: “This was awful for the parents. Having dealt with them over the last 18 months, you can see how it has affected them. Their son is at an age when he should be able to go out and find his own independence. He’s not doing that because of what happened. The whole family is worried and scared.”
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