A serial sex offender from Bolton is behind bars today after his victim’s father detained him in a ‘citizen’s arrest’ – to spare his life from a vigilante lynch mob.
Paul Smith, 56, had just exposed himself to a seven year old girl when he was spotted and chased down the street by outraged locals as he fled on his pedal cycle.
During the pursuit, Smith fell off his bike and was then subjected to a revenge beating – suffering multiple fractures to his ribs, collar bone, pelvis and wrist.
But he only escaped more serious injury after the girl’s father intervened and persuaded the mob to disperse. The father later told police: ”People were attacking him and wanted to kill him. They were like a lynch mob.”
Details emerged as Smith from Horwich, near Bolton, Greater Manchester began four years jail after a judge said the locals were ‘quite rightly’ outraged by his behaviour.
The serial flasher had 108 previous convictions for sexual offences including gross indecency and exposure offences dating back to 1972.
He had only recently been released from jail after serving a six year stretch and had been the subject of a number of Sexual Offences Prevention Orders banning him from loitering around female strangers and travelling on a train with a bicycle.
But he picked the wrong area when he ignored the order and travelled 48 miles by rail to the Barkerend area of Bradford, West Yorks with his push bike, a court heard.
Shortly after his arrival on July 24 last year, Smith was pedalling around a neighbourhood when he exposed himself to the girl from only about a metre away as she played in her garden with a friend.
She was shocked and upset and ran inside sobbing to tell her father. But Smith was spotted and was chased down the street by outraged neighbours and during the pursuit he crashed his bike into a tree.
He spent ten days in hospital and his bicycle was never recovered. Smith later claimed he had not been intending to expose himself but ‘lost control’ after he took a short cut and decided he ‘wanted to be noticed’.
At Bradford Crown Court, Smith pleaded guilty to indecent exposure and breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order
Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC told him: “You came to the wrong area because you so, quite rightly, inflamed the members of the community here that they hunted you down.
”You are a dangerous man and cause great harm to children for your depraved satisfaction.”
Image courtesy of Publik15, with thanks
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