A chef who launched a horror stamping attack on his own father – leaving him with multiple fractures and a shoeprint on his face – because his dad “kept going on about family stuff” was today jailed for more than three years.
Joseph Mearns attacked father Frank after a drinking session at a Dundee city centre bar on March 14.
In the early hours of the following morning they ended up back at a block of flats where Mearns was staying.
A friend of the attacker heard a “commotion” in the close around 5am and emerged to find Mearns standing over his “unconscious, unresponsive” father beating him senseless.
Medics later found a shoeprint on the victim’s face and multiple fractures to his nose and eye sockets.
Today Mearns was jailed for three years and four months as a sheriff told him: “You subjected your father to a dreadful attack and did enormous damage.”
Fiscal depute Nicola Gillespie told Dundee Sheriff Court: “The accused was found punching his father repeatedly to the face and head.
“His friend pulled the accused off and managed to get him inside, where he stated ‘don’t stop me’.
“He was described as being ‘filled with rage’ at the time.
“The complainer was still lying on the ground and was unresponsive with blood on his face and on the ground around him.
“The accused was shortly after found fast asleep on a sofa in the property.
“He was later interviewed and admitted punching, kicking and stamping on his father’s head.
“He accepted he was filled with rage and said his father had ‘kept going on about family stuff’.”
Mearns, 25, of Hilltown, Dundee, pleaded guilty on indictment to assaulting Frank Mearns to his severe injury on March 15 this year.
Defence solicitor Larry Flynn said: “The photos of his father’s injuries are shocking.
“He had been out drinking with his father before this occurred.
“They have had a difficult relationship and he was raised by his aunt and grandmother.”
Sheriff Alastair Brown jailed Mearns for three years four months – reduced from five years for his early guilty plea.
He said: “You were found in a common close standing over your father, punching him repeatedly.
“He was unconscious and unresponsive and you had to be pulled off him.
“He had a footprint on the side of his face, had multiple fractures to his face, his nose and both his eye sockets.
“Stamping on somebody’s head is one of the most serious forms of assault that there is.
“I have known it to kill, I have known it to cause serious brain injury.
“The information I have is that you had a difficult relationship with your father and you found him annoying.
“I assume in your favour that that is true – but that goes nowhere towards persuading me that I should step away from the only obvious appropriate sentence, which is a substantial custodial one.”
