Ballymena man who used iron bar to smash bullterproof window handed six-month sentence

Antrim Crown Court heard that although Martin Kerr committed the offence while a riot was ongoing, the prosecution accepted the 40-year-old was not actually part of the riot.

At an earlier stage, the court heard on June 9 this year, there was “serious, racially motivated public disorder,” involving hundreds of people in the Clonavon Terrace area.

As officers were coming under attack from various missiles being thrown, Kerr was seen unmasked and wearing “distinctive” clothing, in the area of Galgorm Street.

CCTV footage shown to Judge Philip Gilpin, captured the defendant using a “slim, 12-inch long bar” in his right hand to smash the window of a police vehicle.

The officer said there was enough force used that even though the window is bulletproof, it was possible to see “fragments of glass coming from the window” as it is struck.

Prosecuting counsel Daniel McCarthy told the court while the “wider context” of the offence was committed as the rioting was ongoing, “our case is that he was not rioting himself.”

In addition to the criminal damage case, Kerr, from Carnduff Drive in the town, was also before the court appealing two jail sentences for other offending.

Mr McCarthy outlined that on May 4 this year, Kerr was found in possession of a lock-knife and further that on August 7, Kerr had a lock-knife, possessed Class A cocaine, resisted police and used disorderly behaviour on Bridge Street.

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Those offences had resulted in jail sentences totalling seven months being imposed, the prosecutor said.

Defence counsel Grant Powles conceded that Kerr has a record but he contended that some of his issues in the community “have come about due to his brother’s offending”.

In 2013, Christopher Kerr was handed a life sentence with a minimum nine-year tariff after he admitted his involvement in the notorious murder of teenager Michael ‘Mickey Bo’ McIlveen.

The 15-year-old Catholic schoolboy was kicked and beaten with a baseball bat in an alleyway after being chased by a gang in his hometown in May 2006. The teenager, known to his friends and family as 'Micky Bo', died later from brain injuries inflicted during the assault.

Mervyn Moon, who pleaded guilty to murder and is from Douglas Terrace in Ballymena, was jailed for a minimum 10 years after the prosecution outlined how the schoolboy died "solely as a consequence of the blows issued by Mervyn Moon with the baseball bat". It was Kerr, the murder jury heard, who handed 36-year-old Moon the bat.

Sentencing Martin Kerr on Friday, Judge Gilpin told the court the defendant had told probation there has been “negative focus” on his family due to his brother’s offending.

The judge said he accepted the criminal damage was not connected to the riot so he was not passing a sentence aggravated by racial hostility.

Imposing a six-month sentence for the criminal damage and sentences of four months for the other offences, the judge ordered them all to run concurrently.

In addition, Kerr was ordered to pay £100 towards the cost of fixing the broken window.