Weymouth 'stomp' attackers found guilty of assault (From Dorset Echo)

Weymouth 'stomp' attackers found guilty of assault

12:00pm Saturday 14th January 2012 in Local News By Rachael Burnett

TWO men caught on CCTV re-enacting the ‘stomping’ they had given to an innocent man a few minutes earlier have been convicted by a jury.

Kieron James Gauci, formerly of Derby Street, Weymouth and Dean Haywood, formerly of Hillcrest Road, Weymouth, were both found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

It took a jury less than half an hour to come to its decision following a five-day trial at Dorchester Crown Court.

The court heard how John Robert Attwood was beaten unconscious and left bleeding in the middle of Derby Street in Weymouth’s Park District at around 10.40pm on August 8, 2010.

Mr Attwood was walking back to the train station alone after an evening in town and the next thing he remembers is waking up in hospital with serious injuries to his face, head and body.

He could not see out of his right eye and still has no recollection of that night.

CCTV footage watched by the jury showed Gauci, aged 23, and Haywood, aged 45, leaving the area a few minutes after the incident and drinking outside the Somerset Hotel with a third man.

In the video the pair are seen making stamping, kicking and punching actions after pointing and laughing as the ambulance for Mr Attwood drives past.

Jennie Rickman, prosecuting, told the court: “On CCTV we see them re-enacted the stomping they just gave to Mr Attwood.

“If you put him in between Gauci and Haywood that’s exactly the beating he had just taken.

“They had been drinking all day and were high from what they had just done.”

A witness statement from a Derby Street resident, Linda Heather Boskovice, who saw the attack from a window of her flat said: “I looked down into the street and saw a young man being attacked by three or four others and fall onto the floor.

“He was kicked in the torso. They were kicking him as if kicking a football.”

Haywood told the jury he starting drinking at 11am on the day of the incident and had at least 11 pints of beer and some cocaine.

The father-of-four has 16 previous convictions for 30 offences including assaults, burglary, fraud and theft.

Judge Roger Jarvis told the defendants: “You have both been convicted of a very serious assault and there is a very real risk of you going to prison.”

Gauci, of Bligh Close, Bedworth, and Haywood, of Hillcrest Road, Nuneaton, were bailed and ordered to return to court on February 3 for sentencing.