MANFOUNDNOT GUILTYOFASSAULT
A man charged with assaulting another man in the foyer of the Tesco Extra store in Dundalk has been found not guilty at the district court.
Judge Flann Brennan his decision in the case on last week after hearing evidence, earlier this month, from the alleged victim and the defendant - David Lavery, (33), 30 Mullaharlin Park - who denied a charge of assault at Tesco Extra on August 30 2015.
Judge Brennan heard how the injured party, his wife and children had been at the store that afternoon and had seen Lavery and his family were also in the shop. The alleged victim said he and his family, including his five year old son who has autism, waited for up to seven minutes after Lavery left and then went downstairs towards the underground car park.
He claimed he was holding his autistic son’s hand when he went out the door, but CCTV from the store showed this was not the case. He said Lavery was waiting for him right outside the door and attacked him straight away, swinging him ‘ around like a rag doll’. During the incident, the alleged victim’s autistic son grabbed hold of his father’s leg and ended up on the ground.
The alleged victim said his girlfriend and their other child arrived seconds after the incident started and she took out her mobile phone, telling Lavery she was going to film the events in an effort to stop him.
The altercation continued, and Lavery walked away after the incident, CCTV showed.
The alleged victim said the background to the incident was rooted in a conflict between his girlfriend’s niece and the defendant’s child. There was contact between his girlfriend and Lavery’s wife about the children and the alleged victim denied defence barrister Irene Sands’s suggestion that they had threatened them during a phone call.
The alleged victim, who has a heart condition claimed the accused was strangling him - and denied that he’d tried to grab Lavery between the legs.
The alleged victim’s girlfriend denied Ms Sands’s assertion her partner had started the incident, but she admitted uploading footage she’d filmed of the incident on Facebook, along with comments about the Laverys.
Gardai said they had requested the footage from her phone, but it had not been supplied to them.
In evidence, the defendant said that he had gone back to the door of Tesco to wait on the alleged victim to come out as he wanted to asked him to back off with the phonecalls. His wife was in the car with their child and didn’t see the incident.
He said the complainant started swinging at him and he restrained him, before he just walked away at the end. He admitted under cross examination that he ‘probably shouldn’t have approached’ the alleged injured party.
Judge Brennan said he had considered the matter and had a doubt about the evidence in the case. He dismissed the charge against Lavery.