Son glasses dad in bid to avenge mum

A MAN glassed his father in the face after hearing he had assaulted his mother.

The Palm Island family was at a party on December 17 last year when the man, 32, was told that his mother had a bleeding nose after being struck and knocked over.

Crown prosecutor Siobhan Harrison said the father went to bed at 4am and woke to his son punching and swearing at him.

“He got out of bed, there was ultimately a scuffle,” she said. “A witness said the defendant was punching and swinging at the complainant on the bed.”

The father ended up with a 5cm wound to the right side of his forehead, a wound to the centre of his forehead and bruises.

He was flown to Townsville and given stitches.

A CT scan revealed he had a fracture to his frontal sinus, an area behind the brow. Police found a glass ornament from the lounge room with blood on it in the man’s bedroom.

The son was arrested on January 6 and declined a police interview.

He pleaded guilty in Townsville District Court to unlawful wounding.

Ms Harrison said she understood the mother had been assaulted, but told police her husband had been “mucking around and practising kung fu”.

Defence barrister Scott Geeves said the man had long- standing mental health issues and had witnessed domestic violence from his father in the past.

“He is a most unsophisticated man who continues to battle with those issues,” he said. “He’s currently medicated and things are on the improve.”

Mr Geeves said the man had since moved back in with his parents and his mother was supporting him in court.

Chief Judge Kerry O’Brien said the man had a relatively minor criminal history.

“Clearly you believed that your father had assaulted your mother and that was your motivation for wanting to harm him,” he said.

“That doesn’t excuse your conduct at all, but it does distinguish it from the sort of gratuitous violence that one sometimes sees in these wounding cases where there is a weapon.”

The man was sentenced to 18 months’ jail but released immediately on parole.

Judge O’Brien made a domestic violence order that the man be of good behaviour towards his father until 2019.