Teen free climber sentenced after breaching City Council injunction
Manchester City Council has secured a suspended sentence for a teenage ‘free climber’ who continued to scale tall buildings in defiance of an earlier injunction, in what is thought to be the first time anti-social behaviour legislation has been used to tackle free climbing.
Adam Lockwood, 19, of Wigan was sentenced last week to 12 weeks in prison, suspended for two years by District Judge Lindsay Clarke following his breach of an anti-social behaviour injunction order which banned him from trespassing and posting content online.
In July 2019 Manchester City Council secured a three-year anti-social behaviour injunction order against Lockwood which prohibited him from climbing buildings and cranes, riding on the exterior of buses, trams and trains and entering construction sites in England and Wales. This was a result of the defendant gaining notoriety online after posting videos of himself risking his life, and the lives of others, by hanging off the sides of buildings and cranes in Manchester.
In spite of this, the free climber who goes by the name of ‘Little Nuisance’ on YouTube, was found to have breached this order three times in a matter of weeks.
At a hearing on August 6 at Manchester County Court, it was heard that he recorded and uploaded to his channel several stunts that breached his injunction.
On June 7 he stood on the roof of the Arndale Food Court entrance during the Black Lives Matter protest, and then on June 16 he dangled from the edge of a 600ft balcony at the Madison Building in London’s Canary Wharf. On both occasions footage of this was uploaded to the internet.
A further breach followed on July 5 when Lockwood left an abusive message on a Council answering machine, saying that a council officer should be “shanked up” in the street.
On top of his suspended sentence, Lockwood was also banned from uploading videos to social media filmed when trespassing on private property.
According to his defence, the pursuit of “YouTube hits [and] YouTube pay” was partly to blame for his behaviour.
He was also ordered to pay costs of £255, subject to an assessment of his means.
Councillor Nigel Murphy, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council, said: “As the judge in this case highlighted, the actions of Lockwood were motivated solely by greed and his ambition to aggrandise himself. These actions under normal circumstances are incredibly dangerous and not only put his life in danger, but the lives of other people.
However, to do this during a pandemic, when emergency services and council staff are already stretched to their limit defies all logic.
“Our staff do an incredibly tough job at times and they do not deserve to be targeted with verbal abuse and threats of violence from people like Lockwood. I am glad that our anti-social behaviour team and legal staff were able to secure this conviction.”
Adam Carey
