Drunk Doc headbutts partygoer
BLAMES JOB ‘STRESS’ FACEBOOK USERS’ NEW HEALTH FEAR
A DOCTOR who attacked two revellers and a policewoman after gatecrashing a party blamed his drunken rampage on working an 80-hour week.
Dr Gareth Byrne, 25, admitted he was “paralytic” after necking two bottles of red wine.
On his way home from the pub he stumbled across a house he had lived in where a party was taking place.
Though he was a stranger to the guests, he walked in.
Byrne headbutted a man who tried to eject him and told him: “I’m a doctor. Don’t you know who I am?”
When another guest tried to step in, the medic bit him on the forearm.
Police were called, handcuffed Byrne and put him in the back of their van. But on the way to the station he called a policewoman a “f ***ing slut”, kicked her twice in the back and tried to bite her arm.
In June, Byrne, a junior NHS doctor at Royal Stoke Hospital, was fined £1,686 by JPs in NewcastleUnder-Lyme, Staffs, after admitting two charges of assault.
He is now fighting to avoid being struck off after being accused of misconduct at a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing in Manchester.
His lawyer Andrew Bennett told magistrates the medic “completely lost it”.
Byrne insists he is fit to practise despite the incident.
The hearing continues.