Junior championship cyclist given youth detention

Friday 31 May 2019

A former cycling champion has been imprisoned for 21 days after failing to appear in court after he was charged with cracking a window in Trinity Square.

Over £1500 worth of damage was caused when Ethan Greenslade, 21, punched the window outside Pete's Kitchen in 2017.

The young man moved from Guernsey to the UK as a child under a witness protection scheme but had returned to the island for a period of time in his teens to live with his family. 

In October 2017 - when the defendant was 19 - Greenslade found himself in a physical altercation with an ex-partner outside the Brittania public house in Trinity Square.

"Not wanting to punch a woman he punched the nearest inanimate object," said his defence Advocate Sam Steel  in court. 

That punch caused a 'spiderweb' type crack in the window of the food shop in Trinity Square which has yet to be repaired by the owner.

The defendant handed himself into Guernsey Police the following day and was charged with damaging property contrary to The Criminal Damage Law (1983) and released on bail at a court appearance on 4 December that year.  When Greenslade failed to appear in court on 4 January he was further charged with failure to comply offences. 

Greenslade left for the UK, which was not itself against his bail conditions, and was arrested there in May this year which was brought to the attention of Guernsey Police. The defendant had been lying in a road  when he was arrested in the UK for shouting at a "Good Samaritan" who came to his aid. It was not considered a similar offence, although there had been other previous convictions on the man's record. 

Advocate Steel relayed part of his client's history for the benefit of the court including a struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

"[The incident occurred] one week after the funeral of his great grandmother who he was very close to, he saw red, it was an act of impulse," he said. 

Greenslade was sentenced to 14 days imprisonment for the damage and ordered to pay the complainant £1513 in damages and a further seven days was added to run consecutively for failing to appear in court.