Preston Crown Court heard row over £20 led to man having a coffee mug smashed over his head
A row about £20 resulted in a man having a coffee mug smashed over his head, a court heard.
Raymond Mulholland suffered a three centimetre wound on his scalp after Christopher Glover assaulted him in the garden of his house in Preston during a shouting match between the pair.
Glover, 32, pleaded guilty to an offence of wounding when he appeared before a judge at the city’s Crown Court.
He escaped a prison sentence, but the £20 dispute cost him £750 in compensation to his victim.
He was also given a two-year community order and ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work.
Recorder Kevin Slack heard that in August 2022 Mr Mulholland was at home in Orrest Road on the Faringdon Park estate in Preston when he heard a commotion outside his house and went downstairs to see that was happening.
Glover was in the street outside shouting abuse at a man in the doorway saying a relative had been “ripped off” and £20 had been stolen from his van. Mr Mulholland went out and told Glover to “get out of my f***ing garden.”
Glover responded by picking up a mug off the garden wall and saying “I’ll smash this round your head.”
At that point an unidentified man with a dog shouted he would set his dog on Mr Mulholland. The dog bit him on the leg and, as he leaned forward in pain, Glover hit him on the side of the head with the mug.
He went to hospital where the head wound was glued. He also suffered a dog bit injury but needed no further treatment.
Glover, of Samuel Street, Preston told police he had gone to Orrest Road to “get his money back.” He accepted shouting at the man in the doorway but that Mr Mulholland had come out shouting at him and he feared he was going to be attacked, so he picked up the mug.
The man with the dog was not known by either man and was never traced.
Mr Mulholland had been approached several times to submit a victim impact statement but had refused, saying he wanted to put matters behind him.
Barrister Niamh McGinty, for Glover, said her client had no previous convictions and so his actions had lost him his good character.
She told the court: “It was a moment of madness, entirely out of character. He regrets his actions. He lashed out, out of fear.”
She said he had genuine remorse for what he had done and there had been no further trouble between the two men in the two years since the assault.
Recorder Slack said that if he was to send Glover to jail it would have had an impact on his elderly mother. He was her main carer as she suffered from dementia.
“You are a person of previous good character, (but) you have lost your good character,” he told him.
The judge said he felt that, despite the seriousness of the wounding charge, he could deal with the offence with a community order. Part of that order would be for Glover to attend 15 rehabilitation activity days.