Businessman smashed drinker’s eye socket
An Italian businessman fractured a drinker’s cheekbone and eye socket in a fracas at a cocktail club, a court heard.
Marco Maiocchi, 37, allegedly punched Connor Brennan without warning in Bar Soho on Old Compton Street in London’s West End on 7 February last year.
Mr Brennan had gone out with his partner Rhian Desouza to celebrate a friend’s birthday and had drunk up to six pints when he was struck, it is said.
Minutes before the incident Miss Desouza slapped someone in the packed bar, prompting Mr Brennan to tell her: ‘You can’t do that.’
Miss Desouza then slipped over on a wet patch of floor as Mr Brennan tried to persuade her to leave before the situation escalated, jurors heard.
When he bent over to help her get to her feet, Maiocchi struck his face with such force his teeth, eye sockets and cheekbone were fractured, the Old Bailey heard.
Prosecutor Richard Mandel asked: ‘Could you see where the blow came from?’
Mr Brennan said: ‘I couldn’t, it felt like it must have come from the right hand side because as I was bending down the impact came from this direction.
‘I could immediately feel my tongue on my teeth, some of my teeth were fractured.’
Mr Brennan said he felt ‘extreme pain’ and ‘wheeziness’, adding: ‘I remember being on my hands and knees on the ground not fully knowing what happened.’
He told jurors Miss Desouza was ‘immediately upset, she was crying, she was saying sorry’.
Maiocchi is one of the two owners of street food business Poptata, which sells nothing but chips from a gazebo in Portobello Market and a permanent shop in East Croydon.
He accepts that he hit Mr Brennan, but claims he was defending himself after he stepped in to help Miss Desouza.
Sabrina Felix, defending, suggested Mr Brennan’s group of friends had been ‘aggressive and volatile’ before the incident.
He said the alleged victim was angered by his girlfriend’s behaviour.
‘Whilst your girlfriend was on the floor a man intervened, didn’t he?’ she asked.
‘He bent down in order to separate you, remove you from your girlfriend.
‘That’s what happened, didn’t it?’
Mr Brennan replied: ‘I don’t know, I was trying to bring my girlfriend back to her feet.’
He added: ‘I’m not a very angry person, I do keep my calm and my cool.
‘I was upset with how my girlfriend had been just a minute earlier, I wanted to take her home before things escalated.’
Mr Brennan returned to the Bar Soho the following day for his coat and paid £360 for emergency dental treatment in Liverpool Street.
He later went to an NHS walk-in centre were he was told he had fractured his eye sockets and cheekbone.
Poptata has hosted a stall at BBC Countryfile Live in Oxfordshire, as well as The British Summertime Festival in Hyde Park and the Winterville Festival in Victoria Park.
Maiocchi, of Cavendish Place, Crescent Lane, Clapham, southwest London, denies one count of causing grievous bodily harm.
The trial continues
ends
