A DONEGAL man who bit the nose off an Algerian man during an unprovoked drunken attack has been jailed for four and a half years.
Savage attack – Carrigans man Barry Fitzgerald.
Barry Fitzgerald, 23 and from Carrigans, pleaded guilty to the attack on 35-year-old Ali Halimi outside a chip shop in Derry’s Waterloo Street on April 14 last year.
Mr Halimi was sitting in his car outside the takeaway when crazed Fitzgerald, who was in the Irish Army at the time, grabbed him, bit off the tip of his nose and spat it out onto the floor of the car.
The Donegal man then continued his attack, biting his victim on the back before dragging him from the car and beating him with his fists.
Fitzgerald was based at Finner Camp at the time, having joined the Defence Forces five years earlier. He had resigned from the service after the case.
A defence barrister said the Carrigans man apologised to his victim.
He alos said Fitzgerald had “a deep sense of shame” at having let down his family and his former colleagues in the Irish Army.
Judge Brian Sherrard said people who were socialising or working in the city centre needed to be protected from this kind of “barbaric violence”.
He jailed Fitzgerald for four and a half years, with half of that to be spent on licence.