Serial offender guilty of biting off part of his girlfriend’s nose

A MAN has been found unanimously guilty by a jury of biting off part of his girlfriend’s nose.

Stephen Charles McCarron (35), from Moyola Drive in Londonderry, received the verdict at the Crown Court in Derry yesterday.

He was found guilty of the assault against his girlfriend by the jury of seven women and five men following a five-day trial.

The verdict was reached after several hours of deliberations.

However, the jury found the defendant unanimously not guilty of threatening to kill his girlfriend.

McCarron, who had 74 previous convictions, two of them for assaulting the same victim, will be sentenced on December 11.

He was remanded in continuing custody until that date.

At that hearing McCarron will also be sentenced for breaching a court-imposed restraining order by being in his girlfriend’s Bogside flat on the night of the assault on August 15 of last year.

The jurors were told that Mchis

Stephen McCarron leaving Derry Crown Court yesterday

Carron had already admitted that offence.

McCarron and his 32-year-old victim had been in a relationship for two years at the time of the offences.

These occurred, the court had been told, after he and his victim had attended a bonfire in the Bogside following a day-long drinking binge.

During the assault McCarron, who did not give evidence during

trial, kicked and punched his victim before biting her on the nose, partially severing her right nostril.

The victim reported the assaults to a domestic violence organisation.

It advised her to go to Altnagelvin Hospital to have her nasal injury treated.

The court heard that the woman is still awaiting reconstructive plastic surgery.