Good Samaritan stops rape on way to shops by pinning down would-be attacker

A judge has praised a Good Samaritan who stopped a would-be rapist during a horrifying street attack. Ian Hudson, 42, has been jailed for nine years after he targeted a woman in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, at around 10.30pm on December 30 last year. Hamzah Albar, then 23, was walking to the shops when he saw Hudson attempting to carry out the horrific attack. The Saudi Arabian student tried to call the police on his phone, but the battery died, so he bravely decided to step in himself. 

Mr Albar approached Hudson, causing him to flee, then grabbed him and pinned him down, despite Hudson punching him in the face. He then managed to flag down two members of the public who were driving past and they called the police. In a statement read out in court, the woman who was attacked said she believed she would have been “killed” if Mr Albar had not intervened. 

Hudson, of no fixed abode, was convicted following a trial at Newcastle Crown Court of two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, common assault, non-fatal strangulation, sexual assault, and attempted rape.

He had earlier admitted a charge of exposure at the police station and assaulting a PC. On November 13, he was jailed at the same court for nine years for eight offences, Northumbria Police said.

He will remain on the sex offenders register for life and is subject to a sexual harm prevention order.

In a statement read in court, the victim said: “I didn’t know there was evil out there like him but now I have seen evil, and it terrifies me.”

She added: “That night I honestly believe he would’ve killed me if the witness hadn’t come along.”

And the judge, Recorder David M Gordon, said: “I wish to formally commend Mr Hamzah Albar for his extraordinary courage and public-spiritedness.

“Mr Albar intervened without hesitation to prevent the rape of the complainant who was in clear and immediate danger.

“In doing so, he not only placed himself at personal risk, but was in fact assaulted by the defendant as he restrained him until the police arrived.”

In a video interview released by the police, Mr Albar said he would not let Hudson escape.

“He knew what he had done was despicable and he was trying to run away from the consequences as urgently as he could,” he said. Ultimately, I was not going to let that happen.”

He met the victim again later and she told him she had been fighting Hudson off for several minutes but was on the point of giving up when Mr Albar appeared.

After the sentencing, Detective Constable Hayley McIntosh said: “The offences which Ian Hudson inflicted on his victim were truly horrific.”