Dad gave ‘daughter’s bully’ a slap after confronting him at the school gates
A dad who slapped a teenage boy at the school gates after accusing him of bullying his daughter has been spared jail.
Nathan O’Mara, 38, insisted he had not intended to attack the boy but merely wanted to send ‘some sort of message’ with the confrontation outside the school in Penarth, South Wales.
But he said the ‘red mist’ came down when the boy ‘squared up’ to him.
O’Mara denied assault, claiming he hit the boy in self-defence, but was found guilty following a trial at Newport Crown Court.
He was sentenced to 44 weeks imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, and handed a restraining order.
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Recorder Ben Blakemore said: ‘You pulled up in your car, driving unnecessarily aggressively, and approached him in order to threaten him off your daughter.
‘At that point I am not sure you planned to assault him. What changed was something you hadn’t anticipated, he stood up to you.
‘He squared up and he didn’t step backwards when you stepped forwards. Matters heightened the way matters can do when machismo kicks in.
‘You wanted to assert yourself and frighten him off. You struck him with an open hand to the face, that was unnecessary.
‘That occurred because you were raising the heat in the confrontation and trying to get your message across in a different way.’
In a victim personal statement, the schoolboy said: ‘It’s affected my life at school, since the incident I have been isolated from friends and other students spread rumours.
‘They portrayed me to be something I’m not.’
David Pinnell, defending, said O’Mara, of, Sully, near Cardiff had a good relationship with his daughter.
Recorder Blakemore said: ‘You went about things entirely the wrong way. Rather than using channels available to you through school or the police if needed, you decided you’d deal with things yourself and in your own way.’
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