Drink-fuelled fight in street
ALCOHOL-FUELLED fighting on the streets of Harrogate in the early hours of the morning was regarded as "a very serious matter", the chairman of the town's bench of magistrates said.
Judith Thomas was speaking on Tuesday (Nov 24) after hearing the case of a serviceman who pleaded guilty to using behaviour provoking fear of violence during an incident in King's Road at 5.20am on October 31.
She heard how Daniel Joe McGill, 27, based at Dishforth Airfield, near Ripon – said to have an exemplary military record – had been seen by CCTV operators behaving in an aggressive manner as he approached another man in the doorway of a takeaway.
As the court watched footage of the incident Miss Rogers said McGill had been pushing, shoving and throwing punches in an incident which ended in the two men fighting in the street before police, alerted by what was unfolding on the TV screens, arrived on the scene.
In the wrong
During an interview McGill had said he had been out drinking with friends and the group had been into various pubs and clubs. In one of them he had got into an argument with a man he had later seen at a takeaway.
Miss Rogers said McGill's original claim had been that the man had been intimidating him and he had felt threatened. But after being shown pictures of what happened he had admitted he had been in the wrong and had commented: ''It doesn't look good.''
In mitigation Stephen Culleton said McGill, who had no previous convictions, had perhaps been unlucky if he had been the only one to be charged following the incident.
Torn off
''I just wonder if anyone else was charged. If McGill was the only one I think he can feel himself rather shabbily done to. Certainly there was one incident in which a man came up behind him and kicked him before being pulled off.''
But McGill had been bare-chested in the street when police arrived – though his shirt had been torn off by others rather than him shedding it to show he was ''ready for action'' – so it was easy to see why officers had arrested him.
And McGill conceded he had been a protagonist and that if he had left things alone nothing would have happened.
Serious
It would seem his victim was standing holding something in a doorway and the incident between the two arose out of an argument in a nightclub where it had been a case of six-of-one and half-a-dozen of the other before the parties went their separate ways.
It had been, Mr Culleton contended, a classic case of ''drink in, sense out'' in a scene which resembled a ballet more than a fight, though it was accepted the incident was not something which was wanted in King's Road at 5.20am. And it was an incident which would also have military repercussions for McGill.
Mrs Thomas fined McGill 270 with 85 costs and a 15 victim surcharge and told him: ''We actually do believe that alcohol-fuelled fights in Harrogate in the early hours of the morning are a very serious matter.
''You did provoke other people to fight. You could have walked away. You were obviously out of control.''
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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