Community service for drunken bite attack

Friday 26 July 2019

A young man has been handed a community service order after biting a shopkeeper so hard that he could have lost his arm, throwing tea at a Police Officer and punching an asthmatic teen motorcyclist in the chest for "revving his engine too loudly."

Jared Roy Westrupp (22) yesterday appeared in the Magistrate’s Court to be sentenced for the offences, which occurred over a four-month period.

Legal Adviser Simon Crowder told the Court that Westrupp was charged with seven offences - the most serious of which being a grave and criminal assault on a Colomberie-based shop owner on 22 February.

A "very drunk" Westrupp, who had been drinking since 15:00 that afternoon, was said to have entered the shop where he “selected a can of lager” but was denied service by the shop owner who believed he'd "had enough."

Pictured: Westrupp had been drinking all afternoon when the assault occurred. 

Westrupp reacted “aggressively” – shouting, pushing over displays and “trying to grab and punch” the owner – resulting in the shopkeeper having to pin Westrupp to the ground to restrain him. At that point, the young man bit him so hard on his right forearm that he started to bleed.

The Court was told that this injury posed significant risk to the shopkeeper due to a medical condition which meant he had to have his right arm reconstructed through several plastic surgeries and the bite “could have caused bacteria to be injected into skin that’s only just become viable.”

This, Mr Crowder warned, “could have caused either a failure of the graft or complete loss of the arm.”

Fortunately, the Court heard, there were no complications as a result of the assault. 

Further offences included Westrupp resisting arrest on another occasion. When he was taken to the Police station and told he wasn’t going to be given the medication he requested, he threw “a plastic cup with tea in it” towards a Police Officer.

Pictured: The case was heard in the Magistrate's Court.

Fortunately, the tea was not hot and didn’t cause any injury to the victim.

Another incident saw Westrupp confronting a group of teenagers who were revving their motorcycles to leave Patriotic Street car park on 1 May.

He approached one of them and “punched him to the stomach” and “started to push his knuckles into [his] chest.”

Because the teen is asthmatic and “feared he would suffer an attack”, he retaliated, causing the defendant to fall to the floor.

Westrupp proceeded to kick the boy’s bike, damaging it, and he followed the group out of the car park shouting at and threatening them. He then punched the same teen, who at this point was wearing his helmet, in the head and later poured beer over him.

Pictured: The incident took place at Patriotic Street car park.

The whole altercation was captured on CCTV footage in and around the car park.

Of this, Assistant Magistrate Peter Harris said: “Punching someone’s crash helmet, aside from illegal, is pretty stupid.”

Westrupp was also charged with two counts of possessing small amounts of cannabis found on him when he was being arrested.

Advocate Julian Gollop, representing Westrupp, described his client as a "very troubled" individual, who had used alcohol to cope with a long-term back problem.

He offered the young man’s “most sincere apologies” to the Court and said he “would do anything to make it better.”

Handing down his sentence of a 12-month probation order and 120 hours’ community service for the bite, the Assistant Magistrate warned the young man that “getting drunk isn’t going to solve anything.”