Man who stepped in to help after woman assaulted admits unlawful wounding (From Redditch Advertiser)
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Man who stepped in to help after woman assaulted admits unlawful wounding
6:10pm Tuesday 9th October 2012 in Local
A MAN who pushed a drunken woman away from him in a Cotswolds pub was immediately attacked by other customers and suffered two facial fractures, a judge was told.
Josef Barry, 26, and another man, laid into Alan Whyborn because they were angry at the way he had pushed the woman over, Gloucester Crown Court was told.
Julian Kesner, prosecuting, said the incident happened in the Red Lion Pub in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, on January 7.
Barry, formerly of Hidcote Boyce, Chipping Campden, but now of Tenbury Close, Church Hill, Redditch, admitted unlawfully wounding Mr Whyborn.
He was sentenced to a 12 months jail term suspended for two years and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
Judge Jamie Tabor QC also placed him under electronically tagged home curfew from 8pm-6am for six months.
And he ordered him to pay £2,500 compensation to Mr Whyborn at £40 a week.
Judge Tabor told Barry he had been perfectly entitled to intervene when he saw Mr Whyborn push the woman over. He could have stood between them and told him to stop but he went over the top and punched him five times.
Mr Kesner had told the court that Mr Whyborn's reason for pushing the woman was that she was pestering him, she was drunk, and she was 'in his personal space’.
Mr Whyborn suffered a fracture just below his right eye and another at the top of his right cheekbone.
"One punch probably caused both bits of damage," he said. "It may have been this defendant, or the other man who took part in the attack, who caused them. We simply do not know."
Richard Davenport, defending, said Barry had witnessed his mother being assaulted when he was young and it may have been this which made him over-react.
The push by Mr Whyborn had allegedly been accompanied by him using racist abuse towards her, he suggested.
“He has never lashed out at anyone in this way before. He did it because he saw an innocent girl being assaulted. He had seen it as a child and now as a grown man he could do something about it. But he accepts he went totally over the top."
