A TEENAGE girl acted as “sexual bait” to lure a boy into a knifepoint robbery in the car park of Oxford City Football Club.

The 17-year-old victim was stabbed in the chest after four men ambushed him as he chatted to the girl in the Marston car park.

The suspected knifeman was arrested but not charged after the prosecution said there was “insufficient evidence”.

Two 20-year-old accomplices, Kyle Pullen and O’shane Tulloch, said they waited outside the victim’s car during the incident and admitted attempted robbery on the basis they were not aware of the presence of the knife.

At Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday they were each jailed for 40 months. The 17-year-old girl, who cannot be named because of her age, was given a 32-month custodial sentence.

The incident took place at 8pm on February 5 after the teenager, who Recorder Richard Jones said was “sexual bait”, texted the boy “with a promise of some sort of sexual ingredient to their meeting”.

He drove to the site and the girl got into the passenger seat moments before the driver’s door was “flung open” and a man in dark clothing repeatedly yelled “give me your stuff”, prosecutor Joanne Sear said.

She added: “At about waist height the man was holding a knife. The male struck (the victim). He didn’t think it was a punch because it felt sharp.”

After being punched in the face by a second man, who also has not been charged, the victim ran off towards the shops in Headley Way and was later treated in hospital for a one centimetre puncture wound that required stitches.

Recorder Jones refused to sentence the trio on the basis of their pleas, saying: “I think this is such a fundamental matter that it borders on the farcical to proceed on the basis that none of them knew anything about it (the knife).”

After ordering a ‘trial of issue’ during which the defendants gave evidence, Recorder Jones gave the defendants the “benefit of the doubt” in deciding they did not know about the knife.

But he said they “embarked on this knowing that some violence was within contemplation, and the use of a knife in the course of the expedition, was readily foreseeable.”

Graham Bennett, defending Tulloch, of Stockleys Road, Northway, said the offence would have “undoubtedly been committed whether he was there or not” and said his client was “tail-end Charlie”.

Daniel Wright, defending Pullen, said his client, of Copse Lane, Marston, had been at Oxford United’s Football and Education Academy, coached youth teams in Northway and was hoping to head to Manchester University in September.

He said: “He’s disgusted by his role.”

Recorder Jones praised the trio’s families for attending court, referencing the lack of support for some London looters, and added: “The prospect of sending young people into custody is a very unhappy one, but the parents who listen only have to put their particular children in the position where (the victim) was on that evening. It requires very little imagination.”