A 28-year-old man who assaulted a five-year-old child and punched his ex-girlfriend’s mother in the face has been given a suspended sentence.
Kevin Cumming appeared before Derry Magistrates Court on Friday charged with two counts of assault on February 4 this year.
The court heard that police received a 999 call from a woman who said her daughter’s partner had turned up at her daughter’s house causing a disturbance.
The woman told police that he had arrived at her daughter’s house and went upstairs then they heard her daughter’s five-year-old son scream.
Cumming was roaring and shouting at his then girlfriend’s children.
Her five-year-old said that Cumming had pushed him causing him to hurt his arm. A small scrape was present on the child’s arm.
Cumming also verbally abused the child about a lack of bowel control and was asked to leave the house.
Then the woman’s mother called the police.
As she did so, Cumming pushed the woman and punched her in the face.
When later interviewed by police, Cumming admitted he had been very drunk, having drunk 9 or 10 pints in a four hour period, and couldn’t recall being at the house or any of what had happened but said he accepted his then girlfriend and her mother must be telling the truth.
Walter Hegarty, defence solicitor, said that this had been ‘a horrible incident’ in which he had offended against his then partner and assaulted and abused her mother and child.
Mr Hegarty said the matter had a very sobering effect on Cumming and that he had no contact since with the woman and the relationship had ended a relationship that he believed there had been a future in.
District Judge Peter King said: “He’s not exactly a keeper”.
He added there had been nothing on Cumming’s record to ‘suggest that this sort of behaviour was likely or will ever happen in the future’.
However, he addressed Cumming, who is from Carrickmaquigley, Redcastle, saying he had ‘completely destroyed a relationship that [he] thought would go into the future’ and that that ‘quite what was your mind when [he] presented in that state at his partner’s home, I’m at a loss to understand’.
He added that Cumming had funded his ‘bender’ with back payments from social welfare.
Judge King said that he noted from the witness statement that the first thing that Cumming did when he entered the house was fall over, which he described as ‘not very edifying’, he said he then proceeded to ‘fire abuse at a child and punch his former girlfriend’s mother in the face’.
Judge King said that a lack of criminal record and an early plea saved Cumming from an immediate jail sentence and sentenced him to three months’ imprisonment suspended for 18 months.
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