News / Chef got into fight
A GLASGOW chef has admitted punching a man outside a Shetland pub and then struggling with and repeatedly spitting at police officers.
Twenty one year old Daniel Fagan, of Greenside Street, Coatbridge, pleaded guilty to assaulting the man by hitting him on the head outside Lerwick’s Thule Bar on 4 October 2012.
He also admitted to behaving in a threatening or abusive manner by shouting, swearing, struggling with and spitting at officers at Lerwick Police Station later the same night.
Procurator fiscal Duncan MacKenzie explained that Fagan had been working as a chef at the Queen’s Hotel in Lerwick.
He had been speaking to a local girl in the Thule Bar, which had annoyed a male friend of hers.
Fagan and the man, along with another associate, decided to take the matter outside and an altercation then took place.
Defence agent Mark Fallon said Fagan had ended up striking the wrong person by accident, and the victim had sustained a broken jaw.
MacKenzie said that Fagan’s subsequent behaviour at the police station had been “simply appalling”.
He now has a full time job as a sou chef in Glasgow and is working with the AA to address alcohol-related issues, Fallon said.
Sheriff Philip Mann said the incident represented the sort of “drunken, thuggish behaviour” in and around bars in Lerwick which the court took a very dim view of.
He said that, even under provocation, Fagan should have been “man enough” to deal with the situation without resorting to violence. Sheriff Mann fined him a total of £750, reduced from £850 to reflect his guilty pleas.
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