A man who hurled roof tiles at police during a 12 hour, overnight rooftop stand off has been handed jail sentences totalling seven months.
While Noel McLaughlin was given a four month sentence for assaulting police and damaging their car, district Judge Trevor Brown also activated a three month suspended sentence, ordering it to be served consecutively.
Jailing the 39-year-old at Ballymena Magistrates Court where McLaughlin appeared by videolink from prison, DJ Brown told him he “has to reflect that behaving in this way will only end up in one place and that is prison".
McLaughlin, listed as no fixed abode, Belfast, had entered guilty pleas to eight of 11 charges against him including four charges of assaulting police and single counts of causing actual bodily harm to an officer, damaging a police vehicle, using disorderly behaviour, possessing a piece of wood as a weapon intending to cause GBH.
Following the admissions, the PPS withdrew three other charges all relating to the defendant’s 71-year-old father including assault, domestic abuse and damaging his house.
The lawyer described how police were called to an ongoing disturbance at Middlepark Road in Cushendall at around 10.30pm on August 16 and when they arrived, McLaughlin “was on the roof of the bungalow, being verbally abusive, lifting roof tiles and throwing them at police".
A police negotiator was called to the scene but the stand off did not end until the following morning when armed response officers shot McLaughlin with “two AEP rounds to prevent him from returning to the roof”.
By the time the stand off ended McLaughlin had assaulted four officers and had caused a cut to a fifth officer’s forehead which needed stitches but he refused to be interviewed about the incident.
In addition to the Cushendall incident, McLaughlin also admitted a further charge of resisting police on October 20 when having been arrested, he refused to get into the police vehicle.
Defence counsel Grant Powles explained how family tensions had been “extremely high” on the day of the stand off, conceding that McLaughlin had “taken far too much drink”.
“He will not be going back to the area as he has his own address in Ballymena and he wants to move on with his life,” said the barrister, highlighting that McLaughlin has already served “three or four months actual time.”
Jailing McLaughlin, DJ Brown said it was an “extremely serious case".