Ice cream vendor hit 12-year-old boy
A BAD DAY working in 30C heat came to a head for ice cream man Alan Donaldson when a 12-year-old boy reached into his van and pulled the lever on the dispensing machine, flooding the floor with ice cream.
Donaldson hit the boy, breaking one of his teeth.
Donaldson, 58, of Mie Che Min En Amount, Rue du Tertre, Vale, was sentenced to 120 hours’ community service by the Magistrate’s Court yesterday.
He had admitted the offence at a previous hearing.
Prosecuting officer Jenny McVeigh said that on the day in question the van was at Havelet, St Peter Port, and the boy and two friends had passed by and the boy asked if he could have a free ice cream.
Donaldson told him he could not, and then the boy asked if he could pull the lever of the ice cream dispenser. ‘Only if you want a smack,’ Donaldson replied.
The boy then jumped up, reached over the counter and pulled the lever of the dispenser, discharging ice cream onto the floor.
Donaldson hit him with a clenched fist, but immediately said that he had not meant to make contact. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you, I thought you were further away,’ he told the boy.
The boy left with his friends, went to La Vallette bathing pools to meet his mother and told her what had happened.
Donaldson subsequently turned himself in at the police station and, in interview, said he had not intended to hit the boy, but scare him away.
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In mitigation, Advocate Sam McDonald, defending, said that Donaldson had been sent many message of support from islanders on social media. ‘What has come to light is that he is a very well-respected member of this community,’ she said.
‘His action shocked him enough for him to seek medical help from the doctor,’ she added, handing up a letter from the GP to the Judge, along with other letters of reference.
‘Quite simply he had not had a good day,’ she said. While this did not excuse Donaldson’s action, it did explain it.
On that day the van he would normally use had broken down so he had to operate from an alternative one in which the cooling system was broken so he had been working in 30C temperatures.
Donaldson had always had a good rapport with the children he served, she said, and was used to dealing with boisterous or ‘cheeky’ youngsters.
When he struck out at the 12-year-old ‘it was clear that both he and the child were shocked’ when the blow made contact.
‘This was a one-off out of character incident,’ said Advocate Maindonald.
Donaldson had immediately taken full responsibility for his actions, she said.
Judge Graham McKerrell gave Donaldson full credit for his early guilty plea and said that he would treat Donaldson as a person of good character. There were other matters on his record but these were so long ago as to be irrelevant.
‘It may well be that you had a stressful and difficult day and were using a different van. None of that excuses what happened,’ he said.
Passing sentence he said he was prepared to treat the matter as a one-off aberration, but nonetheless had to take into consideration the seriousness of the matter: ‘One cannot go around, in any circumstances, striking 12-year-old boys.’
