Wine club on board Spirit
Granddad smashes stranger gg
A TASMANIAN grandfather clubbed a stranger over the head with an empty bottle of wine he had drunk while on a Spirit of Tasmania crossing, leaving his victim dazed and bloody, a court has heard.
Prospect Vale man Bruce William Thorton, 70, pleaded guilty in Launceston Magistrates Court on Monday to a charge of common assault, committed on the sailing from Devonport to Melbourne at about 7pm on August 7 last year.
Magistrate Sharon Cure fined him $750 with no conviction recorded in light of the fact she considered Thorton to be an “unwell” man with significant mental health concerns.
The court was told Thorton was travelling to Melbourne to visit family when he purchased a bottle of wine, intending only to have a drink or two.
However, upon finishing the bottle, the alcohol interacted with prescription medication
he took for his mental health, leading him to have “irrational thoughts to the effect (that a man sitting in front of him with his family) was intimidating him by sitting a short distance away”.
This led Thorton to pick up the empty bottle of wine he had just finished and club the stranger to the head in a backhanded motion. The bottle did not break. The force “jolted the complainant’s head to the side and his vision went temporarily blurry,” police prosecutor Deanna Wadley told the court.
He put his hand to the side of his face and “felt blood running out the top of his ear and down his arm”. Thorton returned to his room for a short while before Spirit of Tasmania staff performed a citizen’s arrest on him, placing him in handcuffs in the ship’s brig for the rest of the sailing.
It was submitted on Thorton’s behalf that he is a former accountant currently in receipt of a disability support pension. His three adult children and four grandchildren all live on the mainland. He is separated.
The assault had “played on his mind” ever since it happened, the court was told. He has taken steps to address his alcohol consumption.
Ms Cure observed that Thorton had “serious mental health issues (and) has been very unwell”.
She urged him to continue to work on his alcohol consumption, as she believed it to be “quite incompatible” with the “significant” prescription medication he is on.