Threw paint over clinic’s floor after doctor refused to prescribe him opiates
A MAN with a significant criminal record threw paint over a room in a clinic in town after his doctor refused to prescribe him opiates for his addiction.
Richard Swirlll, 62, of Cornet Street, St Peter Port, was sentenced to four months in prison when he admitted the offence in the Magistrate's Court.
The defendant had walked into Pura-Health, North Esplanade, with a plastic bottle filled with paint, walked over to the staff and said ‘chaps, I’m going to ruin your day’.
He opened the bottle and poured paint all over the floor, before he was grabbed and taken to the floor while the police were called.
On the way down, he swiped a computer monitor off a desk and onto the floor.
Swirlll said that he was in the shop to make a political statement as his doctor would not prescribe him opiates for his addiction.
When police arrived, he told them he was doing it to prove a point and said his doctor would not acknowledge him. He admitted pouring paint on the floor in protest and said that it was something that 'would get him into the Press'.
Swirlll said that he had drunk about four cans of Carlsberg before the incident.
The cost of the damage to the business was unknown, the court was told.
Defending, Advocate Amy Davies said that her client had an addiction to opiates and his actions were motivated by his feelings that he was not being heard by his doctor when he asked for opiate substitutes to help him. He had an 'unenviable' previous record but did not intend to cause permanent damage.
Judge Gary Perry said that Swirlll had made regular appearances in court since the 1980s.
‘You are a bomb in our community and when you go off there is always collateral damage,’ he said.
‘You always think you are in the right and it
doesn’t matter who is in your way.’
