A 32-year-old Irishman who hit a Dutch teenager, who later died of brain damage, was sentenced to 240 hours' community service by judges in Roermond yesterday.
Michael Phelan, whose address was given as Laois, was acquitted of causing the death of 14-year-old schoolboy Joep den Mulder and of serious assault. The youth collapsed and later died after being dealt a blow to the head by the Irishman during a street row in Sevenum near the Dutch-German border on July 30th, 1999.
Convicting Phelan, who was not in court, on a lesser charge of common assault, judges ruled that the death of the Dutch youngster would not have occurred had he received adequate medical attention at the hospital where his parents took him.
A serious medical blunder was made at the hospital, which failed to detect the fracture and imminent brain damage and discharged the boy, telling his mother to apply ice to his head and give him a painkiller.
By the next day he had fallen into a coma in his bed at home and died three days later.
The trial had heard how Phelan, employed by a Dutch agricultural plant hire cleaning firm, struck the boy on the left temple during a street row which broke out between the Irishman and another Irish friend and a group of Dutch youths. In police statements he admitted having drink taken and said he should not have struck the victim but was provoked because of taunts and anti-Irish insults.
The fact that the case had been hanging over the Irishman for more than two years and that he had spent some time in jail on remand was being taken into consideration, the judges added.