Firefighter assaulted for putting out blaze

A 26-year-old man who attacked a female fire officer with a piece of wood and caused £4,000 of damage to a West Yorkshire fire engine has been jailed for 18 months.

The female fire officer and her colleagues had been trying to put out an early hours blaze which had been started in the West Bank area of Halifax, but when they arrived at the scene they were confronted by drunken Jason O’Donnell.

O’Donnell was with a group of people near to the fire, and he warned the officers: “If you put the fire out I’ll go ******* nuts.”

Prosecutor Jeremy Barton told Bradford Crown Court that as the officers tried to deal with the fire O’Donnell pulled an eight-foot long piece of skirting board with nails in it from the burning material and hit the female fire officer over the head with it.

The court heard that the officer was struck over the head a second time with the piece of wood, but fortunately her helmet and protective clothing meant she was uninjured.

A male fire officer was also struck over the arm with the same piece of wood as O’Donnell swung it again.

Mr Barton said a woman tried to calm things down, but had little effect and after being told that the police were on their way O’Donnell grabbed a shopping trolley that was nearby and used it to ram the fire engine.

The court heard that the trolley dented a pull down metal shutter on the vehicle and it had to be replaced at a cost of £4,000.

O’Donnell, of Forest Crescent, Illingworth, struggled with police officers as they tried to arrest him at the scene and one of them suffered a broken ankle in the fracas.

The defendant was not charged with any offence in relation to that injured officer, but he did admit an allegation of common assault in relation to one police constable.

In total O’Donnell pleaded guilty to three charges of common assault, one of affray and one of criminal damage arising out of the disturbance on March 20.

The Recorder of Bradford Judge Roger Thomas QC noted that the defendant’s previous convictions dated back to when he was just 12 and in the past he had been dealt with for a variety of offences including breaches of an anti-social behaviour order.

Lawyer Anne-Marie Hutton, for O’Donnell, said he acknowledged that the incident was very unpleasant and unacceptable, but she said he was so drunk he had no recollection of the events.

Miss Hutton said her client hadaseven-montholdbabyand urged the judge to consider giving him a chance to work with agencies in the community.

But Judge Thomas said O’Donnell had greeted the fire crew in a very aggressive and nasty way that night and he had caused damage to a valuable public resource.

“Public servants like these, be they fire officers or police officers, just can’t be subjected to this sort of behaviour without the courts responding by marking such behaviour with a prison sentence,” the judge told O’Donnell.

The judge said O’Donnell’s early guilty pleas to the offences meant his jail sentence could be reduced to 18 months for the affray with concurrent threemonth prison terms for the assaults and criminal damage.