The doctor for the Northern Ireland Commonwealth G

The doctor for the Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games team today (TUES) told of his ‘terrifying’ wrestling bout with a violent mental patient.

GP Charles Gould, 69, denied he battered the manic depressive man about the head with a frying pan or a full wine bottle during the scuffle.

He said he was slashed on the hand with a broken crystal glass and a police officer was left with blood ‘spurting’ from his thumb.

Gould, who also worked as a police medical officer, told the General Medical Council hearing: ‘I have never had a more terrifying experience.

‘

He said he knew it would be difficult to get Mr X to go to hospital when he was called away from work at the Whiteabbey Health Centre in Newtownabbey, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, on election day, June 7, 2001.

But he denied calling for all psychiatric patients to be shot in a phone call with a social worker.

Gould told the committee: ‘We got to the house and Mr X was sipping from a wine glass.

‘He was talking about his conquests in business, selling things to the Arabs.

Then he went on to talk about his conquests with women.

‘He was saying he didn’t agree with my decision and was making rude remarks about my age, saying I was past my sell-by date.

It didn’t bother me.

‘I asked PC Grey if he and I could manage taking Mr X to the hospital.

‘

Mr X then smashed his wine glass and pointed it at the doctor and the officer, saying: ”Come and get me,” Gould claimed.

Gould said: ‘As we went forward he came to his feet and a scuffle or wrestling bout developed.

I would say it was violent.

He is a large man.

‘My hand was cut, it was bleeding.

Constable Grey was bleeding, it was spurting, pumping blood.

‘We ended up near the cooker.

Mr X went for the frying pan.

I tried to move it further away and he was still wrestling me.

‘That might have appeared I was tapping him twice.

I didn’t thing it made contact.

‘It could have come close to his head because I had to wrench it from him.

‘

Asked if he deliberately hit Mr X over the head with the pan, he said: ‘I did not other than maybe accidentally.

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Gould added: ‘It was quite a terrifying ordeal for me and everyone involved.

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He said he went home to change out of his bloodstained trousers.

Gould also denied being abusive about psychiatric patients when he was called out to assess a teenage female patient Y on March 15, 2002.

A nurse claims he said: ‘All psychiatric patients are evil.

I hate them all.

They are no use to society and are all violent.

‘

Gould told the hearing: ‘I did not say I disliked psychiatric patients.

‘

The GP qualified at Queens University in Belfast in 1957 and became a principal GP in 1960.

Gould, of 700 Shore Road, Jordanstown, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, denies serious professional misconduct.

The hearing continues.

ends

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