Dad who smashed M&S warehouse colleague 31 times with barbell learns his fate

A warehouse worker has been jailed for 28 years after battering his "kind and honourable" colleague with a 3lb dumbbell in a "callous" revenge attack.

Abdulsalam Hassan, 27, carried out a "ferocious and sustained" attack on "defenceless" Abdulmalik Aman, with whom he worked at a Marks & Spencer warehouse, a judge told him. Laying in wait for his colleague, Hassan launched a vicious attack on Mr Aman at a busy junction in Derby, bludgeoning him 31 times with the piece of gym equipment. The attack was so violent that Mr Aman lost half his skull. At Derby Crown Court earlier this year, it took a jury just three hours to unanimously convict him for attempted murder.

Judge Jonathan Bennett said: “This was a ferocious and sustained attack on Mr Aman. You had seen him in the Aldi near your house, you went into your address, picked up a weapon and then waited outside with the barbell knowing he would walk past your address.

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"You assaulted him relentlessly. The CCTV is disturbing to watch. He was defenceless. There was one final blow where you lifted his head from the gutter, hit him again, left him there and calmly went into your flat and changed your clothing.

"The life-threatening injuries he sustained have changed his life forever. He feels he now has little to live for, he will never be the same handsome young man he once was again.

"The irony is that Mr Aman came to this country, as no doubt you did, to flee war-torn Ethiopia seeking safety. This was a callous attack. You were determined to seek revenge and you took the law into your own hands."

Prosecutor Mary Prior KC, when she opened the trial, said the attack happened at around 7.20pm on October 2 last year. She said Mr Aman was carrying shopping past the defendant’s Burton Road flat when he was assaulted from behind by him. The prosecutor said: “He had armed himself with a weapon and he lay in wait.

“Abdulmalik walked past without noticing the defendant who ran up to him from behind and hit him hard to the head with the metal bar. He fell to the floor and he dropped the shopping, putting up no resistance.

“The defendant raised the bar above his head and hit Abdulmalik with it another 12 times, each time the defendant raised the bar above his head to gain maximum impact . Before the last four blows, he moved Abdulmalik’s body to strike another part of the head.

“Plainly, Abdulmalik was unconscious and at this stage. He was intending to kill him. He stood up and hit Abdulmalik hard twice to the body.”

Mrs Prior told the jury that the men - both Ethiopian - worked together at the same Marks & Spencer warehouse on the same night shift and that months before the defendant had allegedly been assaulted by the victim and a second man, reports DerbyshireLive.

She said that saw him suffer two broken teeth and a fracture to his nose and the matter was reported to the police. But due to the fact that there is only one interpreter for Hassan’s language, the investigation was dragging on, which annoyed and upset the defendant.

The prosecutor said: “At no stage did he appear relieved that Abdulmalik lived or expressed his sorrow or remorse. His view was and remains that Abdulmalik deserved what he got.

"There was no sign of shock or any kind of remorse. The defendant had done what he set out to do. He had, he thought, killed Abdulmalik.”

Mrs Prior said the victim was taken to emergency surgery and part of his skull was removed to allow the brain to swell. She said the bleeding inside the skull was removed but the bruising to the brain was of such a severity that the surface of it had broken down.

The prosecutor said: “He was placed in intensive care, sedated and ventilated. It was not known whether he would live or die. By some miracle, Abdulmalik survived his injuries.

“He has been left with a severe brain injury and right-sided paralysis, and on November 26, 2024, he was discharged from intensive care to a rehabilitation unit but requires significant assistance with daily life to live outside of the hospital.

“Abdulmalik had no memory of the day of the incident. Half of his skull remains missing and he is obliged to wear a protective helmet.”

Caroline Wright from the charity Headway Derby, which supported Mr Aman following his brain injury, provided a victim impact statement on his behalf. In it, he said he remains in constant pain and only has two teeth, which are not fractured, meaning he is “only able to tolerate liquid food”.

He said: “I suffer constant headaches which make me physically sick and I’m in significant facial pain because of the fractures to my face. All of my difficulties make me entirely socially isolated and I am housebound because of my social anxiety and risk of falling. I am under a speech and language therapist and I am unable to leave the house without a support worker.”

Mrs Prior said: “He also suffered the additional shame which saw him medically dismissed from Marks & Spencer. Mrs Wright says he is kind and honourable, wanted to marry, have a family, and the attempted murder of him has totally ruined his life, living a lonely existence in constant pain, lying awake at night in constant fear of being attacked again.”

Josh Radcliffe, mitigating, said his client has no previous convictions of any kind and that the defendant’s wife had recently given birth. He said: “The excessively serious nature of this case and the damage done has not escaped him. There was a history of conflict between Mr Hassan and Mr Aman in which he (the defendant) suffered an unpleasant assault which left him unconscious and with broken teeth.”

The sentence is made up of 28 years custody plus a four-year extended licence. It means he will not be eligible to apply for parole until two-thirds of the way through the custodial element.