A COVENTRY man broke another man’s jaw in two places when he overreacted to a perceived threat at a social club following the wake of his victim’s grandfather.
Arran Smyth had originally denied charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm and affray, but changed his pleas to guilty at a pre-trial hearing at Warwick Crown Court.
Smyth (28), of Triumph Close, Coventry, was sentenced to 16 months in prison suspended for 18 months and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work and to pay £1,200 compensation to his victim.
Prosecutor Omar Majid said that on May 21 last year Alexander Woodside and his brother were at the Barras Social Club in Coventry for the wake of their grandfather.
Smyth was also at the club that evening, and there had been some form of altercation in the toilets.
At around 8.30 Smyth was in the snooker and pool room when a young woman walked past and said something to him, making a gesture as she did so.
Watching a CCTV recording, Judge Peter Cooke observed: “It’s pretty clear something of a confrontational nature was said by the woman in black as she walked past.”
Mr Majid said the woman then went outside to the car park where she joined a group including Mr Woodside and his brother.
When the group came back in, although as the judge commented ‘there does not appear to be any overt hostility from them,’ Smyth pushed a female companion out of the way and went for them.
He punched Mr Woodside to the face, knocking him to the floor, and then went for his brother.
Smyth was pulled away, but walked round a snooker table and continued hitting out at people in the group, leading to a scuffle in which he also pushed a woman to the ground.
As a result of the blow he had received, Mr Woodside’s jaw was broken in two places, and he had to undergo an operation under general anaesthetic, said Mr Majid.
Following the incident Smyth left the country to go on holiday, and when he was arrested on his return the following month he claimed he had been acting in self-defence because he thought the group were about to attack him.
Lyall Thompson, defending, conceded: “It is clearly an unpleasant incident, the sort of incident the court usually hears about with a young thug.
“But Arran Smyth, I would seek to persuade Your Honour is not a young thug. This was out of character and very unlikely to be repeated.
“He made an error of judgement, he misread the situation. Adrenalin clearly took him over. He deeply regrets what he did.
“If he is given a chance, he will take that chance and will not be before the courts again.”
Sentencing Smyth, Judge Cooke told him: “During the course of this hearing we have all had to watch an extremely ugly incident of violence in a public place.
“It is clear to me that what you did was an ill-considered pre-emptive strike. You were, in point of fact, not actually in peril when you began to react as you did, and your reaction was one of rather extreme violence.”
But the judge said he accepted that some form of verbal threat was directed at Smyth by the woman who walked past him, who was said to have told him: “Wait and see what happened to you.”
And it was when she returned in a group with Mr Woodside that Smyth launched his attack.
Judge Cooke told him: “The strike you launched was hasty. You were wrong, as it turned out, but I accept you were genuine in the way you were perceiving things.
“There was clearly a trigger for you to behave in a defensive fashion, although I have no doubt you will agree you went completely over the top.
“I agree you are not a thug and are not the sort of young man who would normally behave in this fashion, and I accept how very genuinely sorry you are.”
