'Intelligent' finance University of Portsmouth student jailed for having 'vicious' machete in street before scuffle with police officer

Londoner Dwaine Oware-Darkwah, 18, was jailed at Portsmouth Crown Court for the offences after being given a reprieve from incarceration just months earlier after being found with a knife and a prohibited weapon.

The ‘plainly intelligent’ teenager grew up in a world of gang violence in Greenwich where he was robbed and threatened before wanting to better himself.

Oware-Darkwah secured a place at the University of Portsmouth – but the dark ways of his upbringing had already reared their head when he was found with weapons in a public place.

He was given an opportunity to curb his ways after being spared jail in May last year for those offences – with him handed a four-month suspended sentence and given an electronic curfew.

Yet despite being granted his liberty, Oware-Darkwah, living at the Catherine House student block on Stanhope Road, once again found himself falling foul of the law on November 5 in the city centre.

The defendant, whose parents were present in court, was found with a large machete with one side featuring a ‘long serrated edge’, a curved blade and sharp point.

It led to the inevitable conclusion.

‘You are plainly someone of intelligence as you are attending a university course in accounting and finance,’ judge Roger Hetherington said.

‘You would have understood from your previous suspended sentence that if you commit any further offences, especially those similar to the ones on that sentence, there would be an overwhelming likelihood it would be activated along with sentencing for the new offences.

‘Yet on November 5 you were found to be a person in possession of a vicious weapon. There was absolutely no excuse to carry such a vicious weapon.

‘Less so when you were aware of your suspended sentence for possessing a knife and having a prohibited weapon.’

Daniel Reilly, defending, had pleaded with the judge to give Oware-Darkwah, of Boxgrove Road, London, one final chance by placing him on the Safer Streets program to educate and stop people from carrying weapons.

‘In south east London growing up he avoided gang culture and concentrated on his schooling, doing well in his GCSEs and further education,’ the lawyer said.

But Mr Reilly added: ‘He had a particularly difficult experience growing up in the area where he was the victim of robbery and had his possessions taken and was threatened violence against.

‘His reason for carrying a knife was that it made him feel more protected.’

The barrister added that an ‘insight into his true nature’ was shown by his apology to the police officer after the scuffle that left grazes to his knee.

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Despite the plea, however, judge Hetherington could not justify sparing Oware-Darkwah jail again. ‘I find it quite impossible to say it would be unjust to impose an immediate jail term,’ he said.

‘You showed with the chance you were given with your suspended sentence that this was something you were going to flout so it would be inappropriate to suspend any term of imprisonment today.’

The judge added there was ‘value’ in the Safer Streets program but this was ‘obliterated’ by the ‘seriousness of this matter’.

‘The public are entitled to expect someone to never carry such weapons like that in cities like Portsmouth,’ he said.

He then jailed Oware-Darkwah, who admitted possession of a machete and resisting arrest, for nine months.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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