Men jailed for stabbing after argument over mobile

Lewis Day (l) and Daryl Brown (r) attacked and stabbed a stranger at Whitstable railway station

Two men have been jailed for a total of 20 years after a knife attack on a stranger at a railway station in Kent.

Lewis Day, 26, from Hereson Road, Ramsgate, and Daryl Brown, 33 and from Westgate-on-Sea, attacked the man after mistakenly believing he was trying to steal a mobile from one of their friends at Whitstable station.

At Canterbury Crown Court on Monday, Day was sentenced to 14 and a half years, and Brown to three and a half years.

Day will also serve a further three years on licence when he is released.

The victim, a man in his 50s, had been on the opposite platform to Day, Brown and a female friend on 16 December 2023.

Day went to retrieve a mobile his female friend had left behind and the victim handed it to him.

Brown mistook this for the victim trying to steal the phone and threw a beer can at him, which the victim threw back.

Day and Brown chased him from the station, caught him in an alley and repeatedly stabbed him.

The pair then got into a fight with each other, with Day boarding a train and Brown and the woman staying in Whitstable.

A passer-by, alerted by the argument, found the victim and called for help, with Brown and Day both arrested shortly afterwards.

'Horrific attack'

Det Con Matthew Burridge said: "These two men seemed completely unconcerned about leaving the victim to die, and it is perhaps only thanks to the intervention of a member of the public that we are not dealing with a fatal assault.

"This was a horrific attack on a man who had attempted to help a friend of the two offenders.

"The assault will obviously have a long-term impact on the victim and his family, but I hope the knowledge that these two men have been taken off the streets of Kent gives him some relief."