A CORK COURT has heard how a man headbutted one staff member at a shop, and bit another in the armpit, after becoming enraged at a poster displayed there which identified him as a shoplifter.

Mark McDonnell, with an address at the Simon Community in Cork, said he had disputed the poster – which was displayed at a Centra shop on Cork’s Bandon Road – because he felt aggrieved at claims he was a thief.

“I went back to that shop to tell them to take down pictures of me being a common thief,” the Irish Examiner quotes McDonnell as telling Cork District Court.

“I got barred from every pub in the area over it. I don’t understand why the owner of that Centra put the pictures up. I was not a thief,” McDonnell insisted.

The court heard that McDonnell had come from a successful family and had previously owned pubs in London and Lanzarote before his business collapsed and he ultimately had to move in at the Simon Community.

CCTV footage, however, showed that McDonnell had bit one shop attendant in the armpit, and headbutted another one, as they tried to remove him from the shop on March 16, 2007.

McDonnell claimed that he had himself suffered three broken ribs in the row.

The case was adjourned to allow McDonnell consider a guilty plea and prepare a compensation offer.

Read more in the print edition of today’s Examiner >