Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
KILLER AVOIDS PRISON AFTER SAVAGE ATTACK
A KILLER who repeatedly punched a man felling him to the ground and fracturing his leg was spared jail yesterday.
Rodney Alan Bishop, 39, pleaded guilty to a single charge of causing GBH to Russell Mccaughran.
Belfast Crown Court heard there was an exchange between the pair at the Cottonmount Arms bar in Newtownabbey, Co Antrim.
CCTV footage showed Mr Mccaughran was about to leave when Bishop embraced him and shook his hand. A lawyer said: “Then this defendant punches him several times to the head. The injured party falls to the ground, gets up and he is attacked again and falls to the ground.
“He gets up again but this time he has a serious injury to his leg which later needed internal fixing by the use of plates. It was a serious injury as the bone protruded through the skin.’’
Judge Geoffrey Miller was told that since the attack on March 14, 2015, Mr Mccaughran had put on five stone and now needed a mobility scooter.
The court heard Bishop, from Swanston Avenue in Glengormley, had 25 previous convictions including manslaughter in 1999.
A lawyer said the accused had alcohol and drug problems and was sectioned in June.
Judge Miller told the defendant if he “can’t control your demons’’ and is back in court the two-year suspended jail term would run consecutively to further sentences.