A man from Bihor was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence and was forced to pay moral damages of 5,000 euros for throwing a can of beer at the head of a gendarme called to calm him down.
The conviction of the Bihorean was pronounced in a case of outrage sent to the court by the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Alesd District Court in December 2022.
The defendant, Dorel Lele, is a villager from Bhutan, who, on the evening of January 17, 2022, being drunk, caused a scandal in a game room.
To calm him down, the employees of the game room called 112, and a team consisting of a gendarme and a police officer was sent to the scene. Instead of calming down, however, Lele became even more aggressive. He started cursing and threatening the gendarme who asked him for identification, and finally hit him in the head with a can of beer, which is why he was handcuffed, forcibly removed from the premises and taken to the headquarters Elected Police.
“The defendant disregarded in an impermissible manner the respect owed to the state authorities and the officials who exercise an activity within them, affecting the dignity, honor and prestige of the profession of the civil party. The committed deed denotes the audacity of the defendant, as well as the ignorance of elementary social rules, moral principles basic and defiance of the state’s authority”, it is stated in the court decision issued on Tuesday by the court in Alesd, which sentenced the man to 6 months of suspended prison, under the supervision of the sentence for a period of 2 years.
Also, Dorel Lele was obliged to perform voluntary work within Măgesti or Aştileu City Hall for a period of 60 days and to follow a social reintegration program run by the Bihor Probation Service.
The court also partially admitted the civil claims made by the assaulted gendarme, who asked his attacker for moral damages of 10,000 euros, plus the payment of the lawyer’s expenses. “The actions of the defendant caused the civil party a state of moral, emotional and social discomfort, but also a damage to his image within the professional group he belongs to, among family members and in the circle of acquaintances”, the decision explains.
The gendarme will receive, however, only half of the requested damages.
“Moral damages must represent a weighted and not excessive sanction for the one obliged to cover them”, it is stated in the solution by which Dorel Lele was also obliged to pay 5,000 euros, plus court costs in the amount of 3,000 lei and another 800 lei, representing the legal expenses of the state with the investigation and the trial.
The court decision is not final, it can be appealed by both parties, in which case the debates will resume at the Oradea Court of Appeal.
