Urinated outside church while event was going on

A 55-year-old man who urinated outside a church while a family event was going on was given a suspended prison sentence last Friday at Craigavon Magistrates Court.
Archive image.Archive image.
Archive image.

Earl Thomas Mahood, whose address was given as Oakdene Park, Bleary, admitted indecent behaviour on December 27 last year.

The court heard that police received a report of a man urinating against a fence at the Hope Community Church at Highfield Road in Craigavon.

There was a family event on at the church at the time and members of the church had to challenge the defendant who then made off of a bike.

Police were unable to locate him that night but saw him the next day at the Lough Road in Lurgan.

He told them: “I was taking a toilet break.”

Defence solicitor Siun Downey said her client had a live suspended sentence but it wasn’t for an offence of this nature.

She added that Mahood had struggled significantly with his mental health over the last year.

This had included a time when he had been living in the Mourne mountains without any cover.

Miss Downey said that the offence happened at ten to six in the evening and he believed he would have been completely concealed.

She added that it would have been pitch black, her client was wearing black clothes and his bike was black.

Miss Downey said Mahood would apologise to the people concerned and to the police officers.

Deputy District Judge Sean O’Hare told the defendant had drawn attention to himself and with his record was knocking on the door of prison.

Judge O’Hare imposed a one month prison sentence which he suspended for 12 months.