News / Racial taunts triggered kick
A HUNGARIAN builder who kicked a boy who was racially abusing him was let off the hook in Lerwick Sheriff Court on Thursday.
Zsolt Kolozsvari, aged 44, of 9 Pegasus Place, Lerwick, pled guilty to kicking the 12 year old on the body at the town’s Clickimin Leisure Centre on 9 November last year.
The court heard that the joiner and bricklayer, who has lived in Shetland for ten years, was playing football with other Hungarian men inside the centre at the time.
When a group of youths entered the games hall they began to throw food onto the court before racially insulting the footballers.
Defence agent Tommy Allan said that the men were later called “fucking foreign gypsies” and “fucking foreigners” by the youths.
Kolozsvari lost his cool after one insult from the 12 year old boy about what he should do to his mother cut particularly close to the bone.
“His mother unfortunately passed away a few months prior to the incident after two and a half years of hospital care,” Allan said.
Kolozsvari reacted by kicking out in an attempt to knock a container of chips out of the boy’s hand, which launched into his face and left him “clearly frightened and upset”, according to procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie.
Sheriff Philip Mann told Kolozsvari: “It is unfortunate you were unable to control your emotions and temper, but it is entirely understandable this happened.
“Despite the fact that there was an assault on a 12 year old boy, it is one of the these rare cases where justice would be done by granting an absolute discharge.”
Mann gave Kolozsvari an absolute discharge, stating that he was “satisfied this sort of thing is unlikely to happen again.”
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