Dad’s vile slur in brawl with boy, 15
A DAD who assaulted a 15-year-old and called him a ‘black **** ’ in a brawl has walked free after a judge accepted that it was a ‘heat of the moment’ attack.
Dale Hart, 29, threw punches at the 15-year-old after he thought the boy had accidentally pushed past his baby son’s pram while running to catch a bus.
During the fracas in Bolton, Hart, a customer services advisor, squared up to the teenager and told him to ‘speak English’ as the lad waited for his mother and his two sisters, aged 14 and 13, to catch up.
He then punched the teenager and grabbed his shirt.
The boy’s mother, 39, who had been taking the family to church for Sunday service, intervened to stop the fight escalating but after she and her children got on the bus she collapsed with a potentially-fatal bleed to the brain.
She underwent emergency surgery and was in hospital for three weeks.
Hart, from Breightmet, Bolton, was arrested the following day but claimed his attack was ‘racially aggravated and not racially motivated’ and dismissed the mother as being the victim of ‘collateral damage.’
In a statement he said: “I initiated a confrontation with the boy having mistakenly thought that he had run and bashed into my son’s pram. Words were exchanged solely on that aspect – not because of the colour of his skin – and I said to him something along to lines of ‘watch where you are going.’ “An unsightly scuffle ensued and I accept that during it I punched him. “I do not accept I intended to strike his mother at any point. “However, I cannot rule out the possibility she might have received a blow to her head in the scuffle.” The boy suffered minor bruising and swelling to his face. At Bolton Crown Court, Hart admitted racially aggravated assault and affray after his not guilty plea to inflicting racially aggravated grievous bodily harm was accepted. He was given a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work. Passing sentence, Judge Martin Walsh told him: “Had I been required to sentence you on the basis that the initial attack was initiated because of racial hostility towards him or to his family then an immediate sentence of imprisonment would have been imposed. “But your basis of plea indicates the confrontation was not initiated because of racial hostility, but that the racially aggravated comments were made after the struggle had ended and were made in the heat of the moment.” Judge Martin Walsh