A ROW that started with an irate mother and a drunken 16-year old, escalated into a full-blown court hearing and charges of assault.
Newcastle West District Court heard a saga of kicking, punching, and flower pot flinging in the confrontation between two women.
Before the court on a charge of assaulting Andrea Sheerin of Glenma Estate in Croom was Nicole King (40) of Maxwell Lane, Croom.
Opening evidence for the prosecution, Inspector Gary Thompson was told by a Garda witness called to the scene of the fracas at Ms Sheerin’s home on April 23, 2021, that he “found a group of people”, but when he spoke with Ms Sheerin and her partner, Joseph Coonan, they told him that “nothing happened” and said they didn’t want to make any statement.
However Judge Carol Anne Coolican was told that a formal complaint was in fact filed four months later in August.
Ms King told the court that she went to the complainants’ house that night when she returned from an evening of socialising to find her 16-year old daughter vomiting and extremely drunk.
“She was in their house drinking vodka,” Ms King told defence solicitor Ted McCarthy.
“And that’s not the first time that happened. I went to the house to speak to them about the state my daughter was in after being drinking in their house.”
Ms Sheerin told the court that on the night, when she answered the door to Ms King, the accused was outside and began shouting for a young woman visiting the house “to come out and fight her”.
“She was screaming at me, poking me in the chest, and then she went to hit me. I hit her and she went down. I hit her several times. She was kicking at me and I got kicked in the stomach.”
The witness said Ms King picked up a plant pot from outside the door and threw it at her, but it missed. A second plant pot also got broken in the course of the row.
Ms Sheerin told the court that Ms King’s daughter had not been in her house that day.
Ms King denied hitting anyone or throwing the plant pot and said that she had “just gone up there to talk to them” about her daughter’s condition.
She agreed with Mr McCarthy that she had had a lot to drink while socialising on the night and that it would have been wiser to wait until the following day to address the issue.
Dismissing the charges at the end of a two hour hearing, Judge Coolican said there were “different versions of what happened and I have to give Ms King the benefit of the doubt”.
