Dot man charged in deadly pub brawl to argue self-defense
A good Samaritan was killed by a single punch in a Dorchester parking lot as he tried to break up a boozy party brawl, leaving three children fatherless, a Suffolk County prosecutor said.
“The defendant punched Brian Hingston square in the mouth so hard as to knock Brian Hingston right back to the ground, falling backwards and hitting his head on the pavement,” Assistant District Attorney Catherine Ham told a jury yesterday during opening statements in the involuntary manslaughter trial.
She added: “It was a hard enough fall to cause internal brain damage that ultimately caused his death.”
Hingston, a Quincy resident, was 45.
The defendant, Bryan McElhinney of Dorchester, is 24.
Family and friends of both men packed the ninth floor Suffolk Superior courtroom, and several in the standingroom-only crowd wiped tears from their eyes as the attorneys spoke.
The fight took place in an empty parking lot on Adams Street in Dorchester in the early morning hours of April 17, 2016, and followed a night of drinking to celebrate a 30th birthday party. A total of 25 people had piled onto a party bus and visited bars in Dorchester, Sharon and Plainville, attorneys said, before making its way back to the lot behind the Greenhills Irish Bakery just after 1:15 a.m.
A scuffle that began on the bus between the birthday boy, John Kindregan, and another partygoer, Patrick Stones, reignited in the parking lot, Ham said, and Hingston tried to intervene after many of the others had already left or were standing idly by.
McElhinney punched Hingston as the older man acted as a peacemaker, trying to break up the fight, Ham said, holding her arms apart before the jury with her palms facing outward to mime the act of separating two individuals. The prosecutor slapped her hands together as she described the fatal blow
McElhinney’s attorney, Michael Doolin, argued during an impassioned opening statement that his client had acted in self-defense, and painted Stones and Hingston as the aggressors.
He said Stones was assaulting Kindregan, who is the defendant’s brother-in-law, and his client was attacked when he stepped in to defend his relative.
“Mr. Hingston, who doesn’t try to keep Stones off of Kindregan, joins his friend Stones and comes at my client, swinging his fists,” Doolin said. “My client acted in reasonable and lawful self-defense against Hingston and against Stones.”
Testimony is scheduled to begin Monday morning.