THE elderly victim of a carjacking has spoken out about his traumatic experience.

John Bell, 73, was left with a broken arm and dislocated shoulder after a drunken stranger got into his car in Bournemouth and demanded to be taken home.

Colin Bissett, 28 was last week sentenced to eight months in jail after admitting inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mr Bell on July 23 last year.

The pensioner, from Westbourne, was returning home after collecting his daily newspaper from a shop in Poole Road at 5.45am when Bissett jumped in front of his car.

He initially thought Bissett, a caterer from Ashley Road, Boscombe, was unwell, but he then got into his car and demanded to be taken home.

The grandfather-of-four told the Echo: “He said ‘I’m bigger and stronger than you, take me home’.”

Mr Bell said that, rather than try to get the man out of his car, he would do him a favour and take him back to Richmond Hill. But when they got there, Bissett tried to grab Mr Bell’s mobile phone.

He said: “I wouldn’t let him do it. I got his arm and he hit me. Then he got my arm, wrenched it and twisted it and subsequently broke my shoulder and broke my arm.”

Mr Bell beckoned two men standing nearby at a bus stop to come and help him, and they managed to drag Bissett out of the car before he ran off.

Bournemouth Crown Court heard last week that Bissett thought the car was a taxi, was “wholly apologetic” and had been so drunk he couldn’t remember the incident.

Mr Bell still cannot lift up his arm and has to take prescribed painkillers just to be able to sleep at night.

But he is determined not to let the attack affect his life, and still goes out to collect his early morning paper.

However, he has spent thousands of pounds on carers and on a mobility scooter and has been told there will be no compensation from his attacker to help him cover those costs.

Mr Bell spent 35 years living and working in the Far East as a director of the production of clothes for major high street stores such as H&M, Debenhams and Next, and received an OBE for his work in stamping out child labour in Bangladesh. He only returned to his home town of Bournemouth in the past four years, and was shocked to find he was not safe.

“I could be dead, just from sitting in my car in Poole Road,” he said.

“It was a shock to me to come back to Bournemouth and find it uncivilised for an elderly person to go out alone. I didn’t expect to find my home town full of crooks and criminals.

“It’s made me very much aware of people walking behind me.

“I only hope I’m the only one this ever happens to in Westbourne.”