Man smeared blood over police cell during lockdown

Saturday 15 August 2020

A chef who bit a wound on his hand and spread his blood around a police cell after assaulting an officer has walked away from Guernsey's Magistrate's Court with a fine.

It all began when Tomasz Mozgala, 29, was arrested for an unrelated matter on 12 May - during lockdown.

He was taken to the police station, where it was decided he would spend the night in custody.

While officers were trying to book him in, the defendant became distressed and started to talk over them. He speaks very little English, so an interpreter was called to translate over the phone.

However, Mozgala was refusing to stand still and listen when asked to. The officers who were restraining him had to pick him up off the floor multiple times and hold him still while he was swaying his body around and stamping his feet.

Pictured: The defendant pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer (file image).

He swung his leg backwards and attempted to kick one of the officers multiple times, before he made a connection with the officer's leg. The defendant then dragged his foot down the leg, causing the officer immediate pain but no lasting injury.

At that point, he was taken to the floor, arrested again for assaulting a police officer and taken to a cell.

In his cell, Mozgala was seen to remove a plaster from an existing wound on his finger, which then bit to make it bleed. He went on to put his bleeding hand over the cell walls and then washed his hands in the toilet bowl before shaking them and splattering blood across the cell.

Because of the way he was behaving, the doctor wasn't able to go into the cell - which had to be deep cleaned - to look at the injury.

In Mozgala's mitigation, Advocate Candy Fletcher said he was so intoxicated that he doesn't actually remember the incident, but that he was very remorseful after being shown the CCTV footage. He had been drinking alcohol while taking painkillers to numb his toothache, and the combination of the two had affected him badly.

Pictured: The defendant had been drinking alcohol while on painkillers.

Advocate Fletcher said the defendant was in a "very distressed state" because he couldn't communicate with the officers, and that the incident was "so out of character".

"Whilst an assault on a police officer is always a serious matter, it is submitted that this one was on the lower end of the scale," Advocate Fletcher told Judge Graeme McKerrell. 

"[The defendant's] mental state was very poor in the cell and there were attempts to self-harm. He started placing his hands on the wall out of distress, to get attention. It wasn't done maliciously."

The Advocate said Mozgala was "shocked and embarrassed by these offences", having never appeared before a court before.

Since the incident, he has stopped drinking alcohol completely and has moved out of his previous accommodation, where people were often drinking.

"His actions since these offences show an insight as to how the alcohol consumption affected him and others, and a real motivation to change and real remorse because he has changed," Advocate Fletcher added.

Pictured: The defendant has decided to stop drinking since the incident.

In sentencing, Judge McKerrell warned Mozgala that "alcohol and poor mental health never make for a good combination".

Although it was accepted that the assault was on the "lower end of the scale", the Judge explained how the court will "always consider a custodial sentence when such an offence is involved."

In regard to the criminal damage, he added: "In any context, having to deal with blood deliberately distributed around a prison cell is unpleasant and potentially dangerous," but said that had been made even worse by the concerns over covid-19.

Mozgala has been living and working as a chef in Guernsey since last year and currently intends to stay in the island. However, Judge McKerrell raised concerns about whether the defendant would be required, by population management, to return to Poland and therefore decided to deal with the offences in a "slightly unusual" way.

Mozgala was ordered to pay a £1,500 fine for his actions, as well as £250 in compensation to the police officer and £90 to pay for the cell to be deep cleaned.

"I have been lenient on this occasion," Judge McKerrell added. "Make sure that you keep up with your payments or you'll find yourself going to prison."

Pictured top: A cell was damaged at the police station.