Man jailed for 11 months after brutal attack on grandma and granddaughter

There has been a series of disturbing attacks on elderly people around the world in recent months and now new footage has been released showing a brutal assault on a Perth grandmother and her granddaughter.

According to Nine News, Carmen, 90, and her granddaughter Jacqui, 29, were withdrawing money from an ATM in Perth’s south in March, when they were set upon by 36-year-old Troy Andrew Sargent.

Jacqui had seen Sargent reach for her grandmother’s back pocket as she was withdrawing money from the ATM, prompting the young women to ask the man if he’d taken money from Carmen.

Footage shows Sargent suddenly punch Jacqui in the face, causing her to stumble backwards and burst into tears. As Carmen tries to comfort her granddaughter, Sargent turns around and violently kicks Jacqui in the back, sending both women flying backwards and Carmen slamming into the ground.

Carmen needed stitches and suffered severe bruising from where her head smacked into the pavement upon impact.

A Perth magistrate has released confronting footage of a brutal attack that left a 90-year-old woman and her grand-daughter injured. pic.twitter.com/xEK2GsIuuE

— 9News Perth (@9NewsPerth) November 30, 2018

Sargent was sentenced to 11 months in jail this week, after the court heard he suffered mental illness and was off his medication at the time of the attack. The paranoid schizophrenic had been on a three-day rampage and had already chased his neighbour with a metal pole and punched a Fiona Stanley hospital worker.

The ruling comes amid calls for harsher punishments for violent attackers after a spate of assaults and robberies against elderly people in Australia and around the world.

In September, an 86-year-old British woman suffered a heart attack after her purse was stolen while she was shopping at a post office in the Leicestershire area in the United Kingdom. In the clip shared by the Daily Mirror, the pensioner is seen shopping when a man and a woman approach her.

Read more: Gran suffers heart attack after heartless store robbery

The female thief, who is wearing a large shawl, creeps up behind the unsuspecting gran, before reaching inside her handbag. She has a feel around and grabs the purse. She then returns to the safety of her male accomplice and the pair make their swift exit from the store.

According to information shared with the video, the elderly woman informed staff as soon as she was aware what happened, but suffered a heart attack shortly after the incident. She was taken to hospital and was discharged a week later after treatment. 

Elsewhere in Australia, a 62-year-old Perth man was left bruised and bloody after a violent home invasion. He awoke at 3am to discover two young intruders inside his home. When he confronted them, they proceeded to attack him with a shovel.

Read more: Baby Boomer attacked in violent home invasion caught on camera

“My hand was bouncing off the handle of the shovel while I was trying to upper-cut him,” he said. “If he had have cleanly hit me without any blocking, I think vegetable probably would have been about the best I would have got out of it.”

Although he was bleeding quite badly, he managed to chase one of the home intruders away. It is alleged the other stole an iPhone and a handbag from the family home. In the end, the Perth man needed 11 stitches in his head, while other parts of his body were covered in cuts.

Do you think more protections need to be put in place for elderly people? Do we need harsher punishments for violent attackers?