Brawling 80-y-o cops fine

AT 80 years of age, Toowoomba man John Nankivell Watts should have known better, a magistrate has told him.

The octogenarian appeared before Toowoomba Magistrates Court to plead guilty to assaulting a 78-year-old man he had been playing pool with at the Newtown Hotel on the night of May 27.

Police prosecutor Julia Wheaton told the court the hotel’s CCTV cameras had captured the moment Watts had struck the complainant man in the mouth once as the victim was going to leave the pub about 7.30pm.

Spoken to by police the next day, Watts told officers he had struck the victim because he owed him $50,000 from pool games over the years.

Senior Constable Wheaton told the court the only entry on the defendant’s criminal history was a similar assault against the same man in April last year for which he was handed a 12-month good behaviour bond.

This assault came just weeks after that bond had expired, she said.

Duty lawyer Nathan Bouchier told the court the two men had known each other for about 10 years and lived in the same unit complex.

His client claimed the other man owed him a great deal of money from past pool games and that he had also made a derogatory remark about his client’s father and had accused him of cheating, he said.

His client said they had not been drunk at the time and each man had just had two schooners of beer.

Magistrate Catherine Pirie told Watts there were more appropriate ways to settle differences.

“You should be wise enough at your age to deal with this in a better way, surely,” she told him.

Accepting it was just one strike, Ms Pirie convicted and fined Watts $750.