Superman and Batman jailed for fancy dress party attack
... but Robin walks free from court
THEY say not all superheroes wear capes... and, as one court case illustrates, not all cape wearers are heroes.
Two thugs who battered a bank worker while dressed as Superman and Batman have been jailed – but Robin walked free from court after being cleared of affray.
The violence erupted at a leisure centre hosting two events in separate function rooms. One was a Christmas do for Barclays’ complaints department, while the other was a fancy dress 40th birthday party.
Warwick Crown Court heard the trouble started at the end of the night after partygoers went outside for a cigarette.
Prosecutor Ian Windridge said: ‘There was some sort of confrontation before people headed back into the foyer area.’
He said bank worker Connor Paton was ‘followed in by Superman, who pursued him to the stairs leading to the function rooms’.
As another reveller, dressed as Supergirl, tried to push a third, dressed as Batman, back outside, ‘a blow from Superman felled Mr Paton’. Mr Windridge continued: ‘As one of his colleagues tried to help Mr Paton, who was bleeding from an injury to his face, he was also punched by Superman before a member of staff intervened and tried to get him to leave.’
CCTV showed another Barclays worker, Paul Howkins, was then knocked to the floor. Batman was seen kicking Mr Howkins’ head, while cameras captured a corner of Superman’s cape as he stamped on the bank worker while he lay unconscious. Mr
Howkins, 26, suffered cuts to his face and a small bleed to his brain, but thankfully did not require surgery.
Following the violence on December 7 last year, police issued a picture of Robin, who was caught on camera watching the attack at the Sports Connexion leisure centre in Rytonon-Dunsmore, Warwickshire.
He was soon identified as Haydon Illingworth-Joyce, 22. Superman was unmasked as Dale McCarthy, 19, and Batman as 20-year-old Jay Drage. Both admitted affray.
Illingworth-Joyce, of Rugby, was cleared after CCTV showed he had only been a spectator.
McCarthy, also of Rugby, was jailed on Monday for nine months. Drage, of Wolston, was jailed for a year, having been on bail at the time of the attack for an assault on New Year’s Eve.
Judge Anthony Potter told the men: ‘You may have been dressed as superheroes, but the way you conducted yourselves was far from being fitting so far as the reputations of Superman and Batman are concerned.’
He said he would be ‘failing in my public duty’ if he suspended their sentences, adding: ‘I could not send out the message that someone who kicks someone who is unconscious on the ground is deserving of a suspended sentence.’
‘Supergirl tried to intervene’