Man kicked at officers ‘after cousin fatally hurt by police out in Spain’

‘HE FELT HE WAS IN JEOPARDY’

A drunk man who kicked two police officers was traumatised because his cousin had been fatally injured by Spanish police months earlier, a court heard.

CCTV operators in Loughborough spotted bare-chested Riki Flynn hurling punches at another man outside a bar in Baxter Gate and police were sent to the scene.

Flynn, 35, was at first calm with the officers but he suddenly became angry when they tried to put him into a police van and he started bashing his head against the side of the vehicle.

They took him back out for his own safety and tried to pin him down on the ground but he struggled, kicking both officers.

He kicked one officer in the chest and another officer in the arm, leaving a bruise on her bicep and causing her pain. He was charged with threatening behaviour and two counts of assaulting an emergency worker.

He appeared at Leicester Magistrates’ Court, where he pleaded guilty to the charges.

Prosecutor Sally Bedford described how the married father-of-one, who also goes by the name Ricardo Capone, was clearly drunk when CCTV operators noticed him at 10.30pm on Thursday, February 2.

She said: “He was bare-chested. He was throwing punches outside one of the bars and there were a number of people in the vicinity of the defendant’s violent behaviour.”

Describing the later incident as the police officers tried to pin Flynn down, she said: “He was very angry, very drunk and very aggressive.”

Debbie Hubbard, representing Flynn, of Falcon Street, Loughborough, told the magistrates that Flynn was the cousin of 36-year-old Tobias WhiteSansom of Nottingham, who died in a Spanish hospital in July last year, five days after an incident outside a Magaluf nightclub.

She said: “He was taken outside and assaulted by Spanish police and died in hospital.”

She said on the day of the Loughborough incident, Flynn had reacted the way he did partly because of what had happened to his cousin.

“As soon as they put him in the back of the police van he lost his nerve.,” she said.

“He felt he was in jeopardy. The trauma got the better of him while he was under the influence of alcohol and approached by officers.”

The man Flynn was seen throwing punches at in the street was his best friend, with whom he had been drinking. She said: “The friend pulls him away from the pub and he loses his watch and then he loses his temper.”

The friend had not wanted to press charges against Flynn, a web developer for global internet company GoDaddy Inc.

Flynn, who had a previous conviction for drink-driving, was given a conditional discharge by the magistrates and ordered to pay the police officers £100 compensation each.

Chairman of the bench Vena Raja, said: “The aggravating factors were that you were intoxicated and this happened in a public place.

“But we’ve taken into account the things that are going on in your personal life and we are going to go outside the sentencing guidelines.”

The conditional discharge will run for 18 months and means he will receive no further punishment if he commits no more offences during that time.