The family of an 80-year-old man say they have “no sympathy” for the children who killed their loved one, as a 15-year-old boy was jailed for seven years and a 13-year-old girl escaped a custodial sentence.
Bhim Kohli was found lying on the ground in Franklin Park in Braunstone Town, near Leicester, on 1 September last year and died the next evening of a spinal cord injury.
He had been following a familiar routine, walking his beloved dog Rocky to the local park, just yards away from his home. But when he arrived at the park, he was approached by teens who attacked him.
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The jury at Leicester Crown Court heard a girl, aged 12 at the time, had pointed Mr Kohli out to a boy, who was 14 at the time, and who then subjected Mr Kohli to a brutally violent attack.
The 80-year-old grandfather was slapped about the face with a slider shoe and racially abused, before being punched and kicked while on the floor.
Mr Kohli suffered a broken neck and fractured ribs as a result of the attack.
His daughter, Susan Kohli, who found her father lying on the ground following the attack, says it’s hard to find forgiveness for her father’s killers, regardless of their ages.
“Why should they be given grace for what they have done?” asks Ms Kohli. “They chose to attack a defenceless pensioner and for that I cannot give them any of my sympathy.”
Initially, the boy, now 15, told the jury he walked over to Mr Kohli, wearing a balaclava because the girl, now 13, had said Mr Kohli “carries a knife”.
But this was disputed in court, and the attack on Mr Kohli was described by the prosecution as “gratuitous violence against a man who was defenceless”.
While the girl involved never physically touched Mr Kohli, the court heard she had taken a photograph of him in Franklin Park just a week before he was killed.
“If it wasn’t for her, things might have been very different,” said Kelly Matthews, a senior district crown prosecutor, who explained why the girl was also convicted of manslaughter.
“She was the one [who] pointed him out to the boy. Whilst the boy was attacking Mr Kohli, she filmed it. She encouraged him. She laughed, when violence was taking place,” said Ms Matthews.
Ms Kohli says she still cannot understand why anyone, but especially “children of that age”, would want to attack an “old age pensioner”.
“You can see from his physique that he’s a very gentle, frail man. What was going through their heads?” she asks.
“That’s what I cannot get my head around.”
However, she believes the glorification of violence on social media played an element, and says “parents also have a part to play in it” to ensure their children’s social activity is being monitored.
The 15-year-old boy was ordered to serve seven years’ detention and the 13-year-old girl was handed a three-year youth rehabilitation order by a High Court judge at Leicester Crown Court.
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Mr Justice Turner called it a “cowardly and violent attack” on an elderly man who did “nothing to deserve” what happened to him.
He told the boy: “What you did was not one single attack which you immediately regretted, but two separate violent outbursts.”
He added: “I’m sure you regret he died because of what you did to Mr Kohli, but you still say it wasn’t your fault.
“It was your fault and the sooner you realise this the better.”
He accepted while the girl had encouraged the boy’s behaviour, she did not know he would use “anything like the level of violence he did”.
