A SCHOOLBOY who staged knife point robberies of fellow pupils for their iPads has been sentenced to three years in custody.

Mohammed Hussain lay in wait for younger boys as they made their way home from Essa Academy, held a knife at their throats and took their school owned devices from them.

He had denied committing the robberies, telling a jury that he had been at home at the time of the offences in April last year, but a he was found guilty following a three day trial.

In sentencing 17-year-old Hussain at Bolton Crown Court, Recorder Nicholas Clarke QC commented that there has been a similar case involving another robber stealing Essa Academy pupils’ iPads.

“It is clearly a particular problem at that school where the boys who are leaving the school are targeted and it needs to be dealt with appropriately by the courts,” he said.

Hussain was a 16-year-old pupil at the school at the time of the robberies, although he was on a restricted timetable which meant he was taught separately the main classes at the Lever Edge Lane building for only a few hours a day.

This gave him time to lie in wait for fellow pupils at the end of the normal school day.

The court had heard how his first victim was a 12-year-old boy who was walking home on Friday April 17 last year.

At the junction of Morris Green Lane and Hurst Street Hussain, who looks larger and older than other teenagers his age, approached him, pulled out a knife and held it against his throat, demanding the iPad from his shoulder bag.

He ran off with the device, but his victim remembered seeing Hussain at school and, the following Monday, was able to identify him from photographs shown to him by staff.

But the same day Hussain found a second victim.

“You determined this was an easy way of stealing iPads and so you went out again on the Monday and targeted another young boy,” Recorder Clarke told Hussain.

This time an 11-year-old boy was dragged down an alleyway off Uganda Street by Hussain, who again held a knife to the pupil’s throat before taking his iPad.

After police were informed Hussain was arrested at his Mancroft Avenue, Great Lever home.

Graham Robinson, defending, said Hussain has been affected since seeing his younger brother involved in a serious accident three years ago and still maintains he did not commit the robberies.

But Recorder Clarke stressed: “There was never any doubt that he was the perpetrator of these offences.