O’SULLIVAN: POLICE OFFICER PUNCHED WOMAN TO PROTECT HIS LOVER

A policeman accused of splitting open a lesbian’s nose with a single blow claimed today (weds) he lashed out to protect a colleague he was having a secret affair with, a court heard.

Daniel O’Sullivan, 30, yelled ‘F*** off, or I will throw my pint over you’ at Paula Elliot after she shouted at him for urinating in a street.

The Metropolitan Police officer then drenched her in beer and punched her in the face so hard she was left covered in blood and needed nine stitches.

O’Sullivan admitted soaking and hitting Ms Elliot but claimed he had acted in self-defence and to protect his married colleague Lorna Chinn after she had first been hit.

‘I just know that I had seen Lorna, my girl, getting punched across the face,’ he told jurors.

‘She had her head down, she was in trouble and I did strike out.’

He told the jury he and Ms Chinn, a police sergeant based in Camden, had been in a relationship for four months despite her being in a civil partnership.

The couple had been at a colleague’s leaving do in Islington on November 19, 2010, before heading to Ku Bar in Leicester Square, he said.

In the early hours of the following day O’Sullivan and Ms Chinn left to go to the Candy Bar, in Soho, when he said he became ‘desperate’ for the toilet and urinated in an alleyway.

He said that Ms Elliott approached him as he stood urinating and chatting with Ms Chinn

‘I was just standing there doing my thing and she just appeared I and was just perplexed and confused.

‘It seemed bizarre that someone would do that, just barge into a conversation.

‘I did not really know how to react.

‘I just wanted to get it over with and move it on.

‘You just do not go up to someone and challenge a stranger for doing something, no matter how disgusting it is.’

He told the court that he tried to ignore Ms Elliott and that Ms Chinn had tried to ‘fob her off’, but she started to become more aggressive towards him.

He said he feared he was about to be slapped and so threw his drink over her.

‘It was just a panic. She came over to me exploding up towards me and closing me in and I thought ”Right, here it comes’ and I just did it,” he said.

He said he tried to apologise afterwards and backed away from Ms Elliott but that she had pursued him along the alleyway, accompanied by her partner Kerry Boxall, who had now joined the argument.

‘I pushed her to the chest to take her away from me.

‘I feared that she might lash out.’

He described Ms Elliott as having aimed a kick at him and then said he had seen Ms Chinn being hit by either Ms Elliott or Ms Boxall.

He told the court the blow had been ‘lightning quick’ and he had reacted to the attack by punching Ms Elliott.

‘I protected my girlfriend at the time,’ he said.

‘I knew that I had thrown a punch.

‘I do not remember it hitting, but I assumed that I had done it and accepted it.

‘And I accept that I had done it in defence of Lorna Chinn and myself.’

Ms Elliott had previously told the court O’Sullivan, a police constable based in Islington, in north London, had punched her ‘out of nowhere’.

Ms Elliott and Ms Boxall had travelled from Hull to celebrate a friend’s birthday on the night of weekend of the incident.

Ms Chinn was heard to have fled the scene before O’Sullivan was arrested and refused to return to give a statement until the following day.

O’Sullivan, of Whittlesey, near Peterborough, denies unlawful wounding and common assault.

The trial continues.
ENDS