£5,500 fine for selling knives to schoolchildren

ASTORIA International limited has been fined £5,500 after one of its workers sold a 14-year-old school girl a pack 13 craft knives. After ignoring previous warnings from police and Croydon’s trading standards team.

The shop Gift Bank is based in New Addington in Croydon, South London saw it, employee, Raymond Morris was given a 4 month suspended for 12 months and ordered to pay £315 in costs and victim surcharge.

And ordered take part in 19 sessions with Think First, a Home-Office-accredited rehabilitation programme for offenders and complete 100 hours of unpaid community work.

At Croydon Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 26 March, Astoria International company director Ram Kumar Vijay, 53, of Norwood Road in Southall, who also admitted the same offence at an earlier hearing, was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £4,210.80 in costs, plus £300 in victim surcharge.

Councillor Hamida Ali, Croydon Council’s cabinet member for safer Croydon and communities, said: “The council gave this company every opportunity to get free training to avoid illegally selling knives to children and their failure to …  I hope other businesses will sign up for future training courses so they play their part in keeping our young people safe – and do not fall foul of the law on age-restricted products.”