A man with a significant criminal record in Lithuania has been jailed for a violent attack on his partner in Portadown.
Rolandas Latonas, of Clonavon Avenue in Portadown, appeared before Craigavon Crown Court on Friday on a single count of grievous bodily harm and one of criminal damage stemming from an alcohol-fuelled incident on February 12 last year.
The 53-year-old was handed a three-year custodial sentence, half of which will be served on licence.
In detailing the facts, Her Honour Judge Donna McColgan KC explained that police were called to a property in the Abercorn Park area of Portadown just after 5pm that evening to a report of an ongoing domestic incident.
The injured party told police that Latonas – her partner of seven years – had left the property just a few moments earlier, stating that they had been drinking in the house before having a row, which then turned physical.
The injured party stated that her partner began throwing items from the table at her and that she threw items back at him in an effort to defend herself.
Latonas then threw a glass, which smashed on the floor. He then lifted a piece of the broken glass and pushed it into the right-hand side of her body.
Attending police officers observed an approximate five-centimetre “gaping wound which was bleeding to the injured party’s side”.
Officers, who were at the scene, observed that the kitchen was in general disarray.
The injured party attended Craigavon Area Hospital and required six stitches to close the wound.
Judge McColgan referred to the defendant’s record in this jurisdiction but more significantly to the criminal record in Lithuania “for a variety of offences including theft and fraud, as well as much more serious entries in respect of robbery, possession of a firearm, and serious drug trafficking offences for which, I think, he got about nine years”.
Latonas’s defence counsel said: “He seeks to explain but not excuse the behaviour by saying that the atmosphere within the relationship has for a long time been fraught and toxic as a result of both parties regularly drinking to excess.”
As well as the custodial sentence, Latonas was also handed a five-year restraining order against the victim.
