Here are the criminals who have been sent to prison for the most serious crimes in Wales during the first month of 2022.
Daniel Howells-Thomas
An expectant father who was killed by a single punch thrown by a cowardly thug in an unprovoked attack died three weeks before birth of his daughter.
Keyron Curtis, 21, suffered a catastrophic bleed on the brain after he was knocked unconscious by Howells-Thomas outside the Colliers Arms pub in Penywaun, Aberdare, at 1am on October 17 last year.
As a result of the punch, Mr Curtis was knocked to the floor and hit his head on a car door with force before hitting the pavement. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff on October 18. Read Keyron's dad's emotional impact statement here.
Luke Williams
Jailed for manslaughter after killing a much-loved grandfather with a single punch when an argument over bullying children escalated.
"Pumped up" Williams, 24, killed Karl Saffy with a punch in Cristionydd in Wrexham, a court heard.
Williams, who had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, put his head in his hands as he was sentenced at Mold Crown Court. He will serve six years minus 134 days which he has already spent in custody on remand.
Marcus Barfield
A man torched his friend's Range Rover after feeling "rejected" when he was asked to leave the house.
Marcus Barfield had been staying with his victim at his home on Gower but reacted badly when told it was time to go.
The 26-year-old issued a series of threats against his friend before stuffing bags of rubbish under the expensive 4x4 and setting it ablaze.
Jordan Edmunds and Kieran Payne
A drug dealer's large collection of trainers and designer clothes is now in the hands of police after he was arrested while on the run abroad.
Edmunds - alongside fellow gang member Payne - played key roles in a sophisticated £1 million conspiracy which used the cover of a busy car recovery business to hide its criminal activities. Payne was the co-owner of the garage which served as the gang’s base, while Edmunds was a "wheeler dealer" who used his connections to put customers in touch with gang. Read how long they got sentenced to here.
Peter Mitchell
The cocaine dealer caught red-handed making a delivery to Swansea was the former "lieutenant" of an Irish drug boss who fled to Spain following the killing of a crime reporter, according to police.
Peter "Fatso" Mitchell moved to the Costa del Sol after a police crackdown in the wake of the assassination of journalist Veronica Guerin in Dublin in 1996. Read how long he was sentenced to here.
Ivan Hernandez
The teenager stabbed another youth during a planned confrontation in Cardiff city centre which was witnessed by shoppers.
Hernandez, 19, became involved in an altercation with a group of four boys in St Mary Street at around 4.15pm on November 5 last year, which resulted in two people being stabbed.
Airon Taylor
The teenager launched a vicious "revenge" attack on another youngster with a meat cleaver has no remorse for his actions.
Taylor set about his victim with the 10-inch long blade after encountering him in Swansea city centre - then casually walked away "as if he didn't have a care in the world". The man the 19-year-old attacked suffered a fractured skull and deep gashes to his knees, which cut tendons and chipped the bone and which required surgery.
Imran Ali, Majidedeen Arif, and Daniel Hassan
The trio of travelling drug dealers were caught red-handed thanks to an eagled-eyed PCSO who became suspicious of their activities.
Checks showed the car the trio were in had been hired from Birmingham Airport the previous day and driven to Swansea.
Inside were three men from the west Midlands along individual deals of crack cocaine wrapped in cigarette papers on which was written the phone number of a drugs gang.
David Bishop and Matthew Coles
A vulnerable wheelchair user with an amputated leg was the victim of a "disgusting" burglary where thieves took cash and bank cards.
Bishop, 39, andColes, 38, targeted their victim's property in Cardiff on May 10 last year.
Adrian Rees
He r epeatedly punched and bit his girlfriend after going home drunk following a Christmas party with workmates.
An intoxicated Rees began challenging the woman to a fight before raining blows down on her and then sinking his teeth into her lip.
Carwyn Roberts
The cruel and manipulative man pretended to be a lawyer and a doctor in a bid to control his partner’s life – even persuading the vulnerable woman she was pregnant.
Roberts created a series of fake people and email accounts in order to spin a web of lies which ranged from the couple buying a house together to convincing her she had been drugged and sexually abused in her own home. He also persuaded her to give up her job at a school after saying he had secured a new position for her with the local council.
Michael Crossley
The paedophile travelled to Wales with sex toys, condoms, and lubricant after arranging to sexually abuse a young child.
Crossley spent months chatting to someone he believed to be the girl's mother online and over the phone before making the trip from his home in Bolton to carry out his sick fantasies. In fact he had been communicating with an undercover policewoman and officers were waiting for him when he arrived at the meeting point in Cardiff. Read the full story here.
Phillip Morgan
A dad-of-five caught with a kilo of cannabis claimed the large amount of the drug was all for his personal use.
Morgan - who also goes by the name Paul Jones - was caught after police saw his car speeding along a residential street, and decided to follow it. The 50-year-old was found to be in possession of cash and cannabis, and a search of the house he shares with his long-term partner uncovered more than a kilo of the drug.
Benjamin Metcalfe
Metcalfe was visiting Wales for work when he ran after a teenage girl and sexually assaulted her in a dark alleyway.
At dusk on December 2, 2019, he was in Milford Haven in his works van about to get petrol when he saw a 16-year-old girl pass by.
When she passed the forecourt of the garage, he ran after her for several hundred yards, following her into a dark alleyway.
Nihal Abedein
The parents of a Swansea University student are "devastated" after he was locked up for running a high-value drug network.
Abedein, 18, was studying to be an accountant when he started dealing Class A drugs. He was handling a 'county line' in Swansea, purchasing thousands of pounds' worth of illegal substances and selling them to vulnerable users.
Joseph D'Agnilli
The company director who sexually assaulted three young children has been described as "an abuser hiding in plain sight".
The 71-year-old, of Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan, sexually abused one child in the 1980s and assaulted his other two victims within the last decade.
Kevin Hooton and Brian Barnes
A heroin and crack dealer who supposedly had an "almost Biblical" drive to change his wicked ways was seen selling drugs on the streets of Swansea just 18 days after being released from prison.
In February 2018 Kevin Hooton was jailed for a total of six years and eight months for a string of offending in Swansea and in his native Liverpool. He was released on licence from that sentence on January 19, 2021 - but within days was back to his old ways.
Hooton was found to have teamed up with fellow Liverpudlian Brian Barnes after his release from prison, and together they were in running a drugs telephone for a Merseyside gang. Together they were responsible for a county lines drugs telephone number known to users in Swansea as the "Scouse Jay" line. Read more here.
Gareth Harris
The father has been jailed after his brother found out about his "addiction" to indecent images.
Harris, 40, had more than 50,000 sick images of children aged between three and 15. One involved a dog and an eight-year-old child.
Kyle Protheroe
The binman was jailed after attacking his ex-partner, stalking her and brutally beating up her friend in a series of jealous rages.
Protheroe, of Port Road in Rhoose, assaulted his former girlfriend Rachel Jones with a phone before embarking on a terrifying campaign of stalking which left her and her daughter traumatised. When he saw Ms Jones with a male friend, he rained down punches and kicks on the man's head and body, leaving him needing hospital treatment.
Jordan Merli-Hampton
The former theology student beat up and sexually assaulted a woman after boozing and taking drugs.
As the woman struggled to free herself, the attacker told her: "Be quiet or I'll end your life." Sending Jordan Merli-Hampton to prison, a judge told him he had let his children down.
Richard Taylor
The "devoted family man" and charity fundraiser has been jailed for the rape and sexual abuse of a girl he carried out in the 1980s.
Taylor was a teenager when he subjected his young victim to a series of sexual assaults.
Swansea Crown Court heard the abuse had a devastating effect on the girl's life while Taylor effectively put the offending behind him and went on to lead a "very decent, productive, even admirable life".
Nathaniel Desforges
The homeless drug dealer led police to discovering a cocaine conspiracy he spearheaded after they saw him living in his car.
Desforges, 29, was the leader of a drug dealing operation based in Bridgend which saw him recruit drug users who owed him money to sell class A substances at his instruction.
Kenneth Kesans
He subjected a young girl to a string of sickening sexual assaults and then rang police almost two decades later to r eport what he had done.
Kesans, who also goes by the name Kenneth Rowles, told officers he needed to "come clean" about what he had done in his past.
Swansea Crown Court heard the abuse he subjected his victim to in the early 2000s has had a devastating effect on her life.
Abideni Tajudeen Adegbite
The fraudster used fake Nigerian passports to take out mobile phone contracts at 02 stores across south Wales worth thousands of pounds.
Adegbite, 54, attended phone shops in Newport, Chepstow and Bridgend after travelling from his home in London with fradulent ID documents which he used to take contracts out on a number of iPhones and Apple Watches.
Qasim Rasul
The creeper burglar who stole a Ford Mustang car was caught thanks to a barking dog and some dogged detective work by the vehicle's owners.
Rasul and another thief were seen quietly pushing the American muscle-car down the road in the early hours of the morning after breaking into the victims' house.
The 42-year-old was out of prison on licence at the time of the incident following a previous conviction for burglary - when he had broken into the home of an 89-year-old woman - and has now clocked up 100 criminal offences.
John Fury
He set fire to a property he had been staying in and was arrested after being spotted coming back to film the blaze.
Fury was spotted using a mobile phone by a neighbour at Millfield Close in Cardiff in the early hours of August 21 last year talking, and heard to be suggesting one of the flats in the property would be "going up in a minute".
A short time later smoke could be seen coming from one of the properties in the two-storey block of six flats.
Mark Lenthall
The convicted paedophile travelled 250 miles to Wales with the intention of meeting up with a child for sex.
Lenthall, 53, travelled from his home in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, to Caerphilly, on July 10, last year in order to meet up with who he thought was a child.
But he had speaking to a decoy and was intercepted by detectives from Tarian who conducted an intelligence-led operation to catch the sex offencer.
Daniel Bryant
A police officer who found himself "outnumbered" as he tried to arrest the aggressive banned driver had to draw his Taser stun gun.
Bryant - who has never passed a driving test - was spotted at the wheel of a car by plain clothes policemen who recognised him.
Just months earlier the 31-year-old defendant had been handed a suspended prison sentence and banned from the road for dangerous driving. Sending Bryant to prison, a judge told him it seemed he didn't think orders of the court applied to him.
Carlton Blackwell
The relentless life-long burglar is back behind bars for breaking into yet another house.
Blackwell sneaked into his victims' house in the dead of night as they slept upstairs and stole their car - which was found a week later trashed and dumped in a field.
As well as 17 previous house burglaries on his record the defendant has a conviction for armed robbery, an offence which saw him and two accomplice raiding a bookmakers and terrorising the female staff with a imitation double-barrel sawn-off shotgun. Read about his long list of convictions here.
Liam Williams
He attempted to headbutt a police officer after illegally attending his ex-partner's home and falling into a drunken stupor on her sofa.
Williams, 23, was made subject to a restraining order preventing him from contacting his ex-partner Danielle Lynley after he assaulted her and strangled her.
Ethan Ernest
The cocaine dealer was found with £18,000 when police searched his home after he was found with drugs when pulled over for drink-driving.
Ernest attempted to escape from police in Cardiff on November 28 last year when his Peugeot 308 sped through a red light.
The 28-year-old drove through the streets of Cardiff Bay until he drove into a dead end which caused him to jump out of the car and attempt to run away but he was spotted by an officer after his head popped up above a bush.
Bobby Taylor
He "forcefully" shoved a woman he had just met down concrete steps leaving her with serious facial injuries.
Taylor and his victim had only met a short time before the assault, and were sat together talking on the seafront steps outside Swansea Civic Centre
After pushing the woman down the steps - a fall which left her with a broken jaw and knocked three of her teeth out - the defendant fled the scene but was identified after witnesses were able to describe his distinctive tattoos.
Gavin Bennett
Jailed after kicking and stamping on another man nine times in a village car park.
Bennett was caught on CCTV exchanging punches with a man in Southend Terrace, Pontlottyn, Caerphilly, before flooring him and aiming a series of blows at his head. Bennett took off his shoe and used it to strike his victim repeatedly.
Damien Winnett
The former plasterer turned to working for a drug gang and delivering huge quantities of cocaine from Liverpool to Wales.
Winnett, of Blaen-Blodau Street in Newbridge, was living with his parents while bringing tens of thousands of pounds worth of cocaine to Cardiff.
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