A violent fare dodger has escaped a jail term for punching a train conductor, despite it being his second conviction for assault, we can reveal. Finley Seggie attacked Peter Corley, 62, when the railway worker asked him to show his ticket. Mr Corley was left needing £3,000 worth of dental treatment in the violent assault at a West Yorkshire station on December 14, 2024.
Attack details
Seggie, 21, admitted actual bodily harm at Leeds Crown Court but was spared prison after a judge handed him a 16-month suspended sentence. However, the thug had already dodged jail for an almost identical attack three years earlier, after a judge agreed he had grown into 'a very different person' since the assault. The previous attack took place at a Budgens corner shop in Garforth, West Yorkshire, in September 2021, when Seggie punched a customer who had reported him and his friends to staff for anti-social behaviour - leaving him unconscious and needing ten stitches. He claimed self-defence in both attacks - a claim rejected by courts on each occasion - yet walked free without serving a prison sentence either time.
Victim's story
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Corley said he felt fortunate to have survived his assault – as another man was attacked in the same way the following day at York station and lost his life. James Hitchcock, 32, was hit from behind with a single punch by stranger Mckenzie Dicicco, 22, after a night out with friends on December 15, 2024 – and later passed away in hospital. Mr Hitchcock, an amateur footballer from Cottingham, East Yorkshire, had been just days away from his first Christmas as a father. His wife, April, said his death had left her with 'unexplainable grief': 'I'm now a widow, lost and alone as the love of my life and best friend was so selfishly taken from me.' Dicicco, from Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, pled guilty to manslaughter. He was jailed for six years and eight months in July last year.
Mr Corley said: 'He went down extremely hard, hit his head on the platform surface and died the following day. A lot of that played on my mind. It was the kind of punch that if I'd have been more frail…' The grandfather from York worked as a Lance Corporal in the army in the 1980s before becoming a custody inspector for West Yorkshire Police, which he retired from in 2015. But wanting a part-time job to keep him busy, he started working for Northern Trains in 2018 – with his voice even being used for automated station and safety announcements. He was conducting a Sunday teatime train on the roughly 25-minute journey from Leeds to York when he asked Seggie and his friend, who was known to rail staff as a repeated fare dodger, for their tickets.
Assault incident
'The friend was effing and blinding, 'No, I haven't got a ticket and don't f***ing ask me again',' he said, with Seggie soon joining in. 'He leapt up and did what I termed a bit of a false flag thing, 'Boy, give me some space, your breath stinks, you're a fat c***', all that sort of stuff. So really quite abusive and embarrassing really.' Mr Corley asked the pair to get off at the next station and alerted the driver, before escorting a 'very frightened' elderly woman sitting nearby, who wanted the next stop, safely to the doors. As the train pulled in, he spotted the friend run off, he said, leaving him thinking he was in the clear: 'I look up and the other boy is coming straight towards me, very briskly, with a crooked and evil-looking smile. He knew exactly what he was going to do and he got me. I felt a bit ashamed really because as a policeman, you're trained to keep a reactionary gap – but there was just nowhere to go.'
'In any event, he got a very professional, accurate, powerful single punch onto my mouth, thrown from his waist. If I'd seen that thrown in a boxing ring, I would have clapped.' He continued: 'I had a surreal moment of watching my own tooth leave my mouth. It flew across the carriage. It was quite dramatic.' Seggie fled the scene, leaving Mr Corley with 'a mouth full of blood', he said, as passengers rushed to assist and called the police. Despite his injuries, he conducted the train for the rest of the journey, explaining: 'That line between Leeds and York is pretty critical and there were at least six express trains behind us.' He was met by the British Transport Police on the other end, where he got in a taxi to York Royal Infirmary.
Aftermath and previous conviction
Mr Corley lost his top-right incisor and had to have a bridge fitted, with Northern Trains footing the bill for his dental repair. But facing a period of sick leave, having reached the rail company's retirement age and with staff concerned about how the incident might impact his welfare, it was decided he would leave the job – and that train was the last he ever conducted. Mr Corley said: 'They were a very kind and responsible employer. I really miss that job.' He now works as a supermarket customer team member and delivery driver – where customer aggression is also a problem and sometimes 'things get a little bit hairy'. 'I've had a couple of conversations with people that were trying it on,' he said.
The attack came mere months after Seggie, then aged just 16, assaulted the Budgens customer, who he overheard reporting him and his friends to shop workers, a court was told. Prosecutor Ellie Guildford said he quickly became verbally abusive, saying, 'Who the f*** do you think you are?', before asking the man to 'take it outside' and fight him. The customer left the store and walked to his car – but Seggie followed him and punched him in the face, causing him to fall unconscious and drop to the ground. Bystanders rushed to help the man, who was taken to hospital. After his arrest, Seggie admitted punching the man – but, as with Mr Corley, said he did so in self-defence. In a victim impact statement read out in court, the customer said the attack had left him 'hyper vigilant' when out in public. He also said he was frustrated the youths were 'still on the street continuing their anti-social behaviour'.
Sentencing
But in mitigation, defence lawyer Giles Grant said Seggie had stayed out of trouble since the attack, which 'suggested a significant change in him'. Sentencing, Judge Kate Rayfield similarly noted his behaviour in the two years that had passed since the incident. 'The delay has not been explained, but it has allowed you to demonstrate that you are a very different person than you were at 16,' she said. The judge handed him an 18-month community order and ordered him to complete 15 rehabilitation days and 80 hours of unpaid work. He was also instructed to enrol on a violence awareness programme and pay £500 compensation to his victim. But despite the rehabilitative sentence, the youth appears to have shown little change in his behaviour. His social media is full of pictures of him posing with large wads of cash, wearing a dark jacket, hood and balaclava, and making crude gestures and gun signs to the camera.
'I've had verbal assaults on at least half a dozen occasions and a very mildly sexual assault where my backside was touched,' he said. 'I was really quite humiliated, if I'm honest.' He continued: 'My main concern is that we do something collectively as a society or population to challenge this kind of behaviour and say something about it and not be scared of these people. That's easier said than done. Some people would have been devastated by this, quite rightly, and would never get over it.' Seggie was arrested on February 18 for attacking Mr Corley, after being identified using CCTV footage. He claimed he punched the conductor in self defence but later admitted the charge and was sentenced in May. Mr Corley said: 'Most people operating outside the law are perfectly ordinary good people, who, for a variety of reasons, have chosen a wrong path. I bear no grudge towards him. I am satisfied with the outcome, but I would have preferred to meet him face to face as restorative justice, to look him in the eye and ask why he did this.'
