Last updated at 09:59, Saturday, 31 July 2010

An Egremont man who assaulted a woman as she waited for a taxi has been spared a prison sentence.

At Carlisle Crown Court, Mr Justice Irwin decided it would be “unjust” to activate David Cray’s suspended sentence for his latest offence of battery but warned him that it was his “very last chance”.

The court heard that Cray’s victim, Mrs Wiper, had been waiting for a taxi with her husband in Whitehaven in the early hours of June 19 following the World Cup match the previous evening.

It was when the couple’s taxi arrived that they became involved in an altercation with 45 year-old Cray, who jumped the queue and tried to get in the cab before them.

Prosecutor Alan Lovett said: “Mrs Wiper said ‘this is our taxi, we’ve been queuing’, but the defendant didn’t say anything, he just looked at her with a horrible look.

“She thought she would get hit and that’s what happened. He punched her in the neck and at the same time grabbed hold of her, causing her to fall to the ground.”

As a result of the attack, which Cray admitted, Mrs Wiper suffered injuries to her leg, particularly her knee, as well as cuts and grazes and a swollen calf.

At the time of the assault Cray had been the subject of a 30-week suspended sentence, imposed on April 3 2009 for an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He had four months left to run on that sentence when he committed his most recent offence and he admitted being in breach of it yesterday.

Sentencing him to a 12-month community order with supervision requirement and a six-month alcohol treatment programme for the battery offence, Mr Justice Irwin said that he felt it was “more just to compel [him] to address [his] alcohol problem” rather than jail him.

But he warned Cray, of Dent View, that if he were to breach his community order he had “had about as much rope as the court is ever going to give”.

He was also ordered to pay £1,000 in compensation to Mrs Wiper and costs of £340.

First published at 09:03, Saturday, 31 July 2010
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk