Former boxer jailed for 'crazy' attack on club doorman
Published Date: 30 September 2008
A FORMER professional boxer behaved like a madman attacking a club doorman with a chair after getting drunk on a Christmas night out, a court heard.
Carl Gaffney subjected Andrew Cooper to a "repeated and sustained" attack with the metal chair when a melee began in the Wildcats lapdancing club in Cheapside, Wakefield, in the early hours of December 22 last year.
Richard Walters, prosecuting,
old Leeds Crown Court that another doorman at the club said the way Gaffney was using the chair like an axe to hit Mr Cooper, it looked as though he wanted to kill him, describing him as "like a crazy person".
Gaffney, 44, of Gainsborough Way, Stanley, Wakefield, was jailed for three years and four months after he admitted wounding Mr Cooper with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm.
Judge Penelope Belcher said it was "fortunate" the injuries to Mr Cooper were not more severe.
She accepted Gaffney had not gone out intending to cause trouble but fuelled by drink he had committed a very serious offence – "an all too common story of a drunken incident in a nightclub".
Mr Walters said the trouble began when one of a group of young men in the club grabbed a chair from another group of older men. A doorman asked the younger men to leave but was pushed away and one took up an aggressive stance while another picked up a bottle.
Mr Cooper went to the doorman's aid but was then thrown to the ground where he was punched and kicked. At some stage Gaffney hit him in the head with the chair.
Mr Cooper was treated at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield for injuries to his face and scalp.
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