[A] POLICE officer has been convicted of attacking a man in his Workington home while off-duty.
Carlisle Crown Court heard how Stephen William Light, a sergeant with Northumbria Police, was said to have been “simmering with resentment” when he entered Andrew Grant’s Fountains Avenue home uninvited and unannounced during the early hours of April 11.
Light, who had earlier drank “10 pints-plus”, attacked and injured Mr Grant with the end of a metal kitchen roll holder amid a noise nuisance dispute between the householder and his next door neighbours – the officer’s father and step-mother – which a council was probing.
“I have got seven stitches put in my head and the injury was down to my skull,” Mr Grant told jurors while giving evidence in court earlier this week. Light had gone on trial having denied the unlawful wounding of Mr Grant and causing criminal damage to his windows.
However, this afternoon (THURS), a jury found Light guilty, unanimously, of the wounding crime.
When being booked into the police station following his arrest, Light had told officers: “I’ve lost faith in the police. I’ve lost faith in the council and I am in fear for my family’s safety. If you let me out I will kill him.”
Light, 44, claimed to have acted in self-defence.
But prosecutor Gerard Rogerson had said to jurors at the start of the trial: “This case is about a man who took the law into his own hands having, by his own admission, lost faith in the police service – a police service for which he works.”
Light, of Bede Close, Newcastle-upon-Tyne – an officer with 22 years’ service, had his case adjourned by Recorder Julie Clemitson for the preparation of specialist background reports.
Light – acquitted by jurors on the damage allegation – is due to be sentenced at the crown court on September 14. In the meantime he was granted conditional bail by the judge.
