Wheelie bin row results in court face-off

A 33-YEAR-OLD Nicosia lawyer who was found guilty of verbally abusing and physically assaulting his neighbour last summer was yesterday in court to tell the other side of the ‘wheelie bin assault’.
This time instead of being in the dock, it was the lawyer who was in the witness stand and his neighbour who was in the dock over the August 2007 incident.
He said it had been she who had verbally accosted him, spat in his face, slapped him and scratched the right side of his neck “quite deeply”. He even had a doctor’s note certifying his injuries which was submitted as evidence.
The clash erupted when the community council placed the green wheelie bin in a specific spot. For some reason the lawyer’s neighbour was allegedly in the habit of moving it and placing it outside his home and specifically under his bedroom window, he said.
On the day in question his father-in-law had found the wheelie bin again placed under the window and decided to move it back to its rightful place when he ran into the neighbour.
The lawyer said he was in the garden at the time when he heard his neighbour shouting obscenities at his father-in-law. “She allegedly said” “You w**kers, I’m in charge here”.
When the lawyer went to investigate he said his neighbour turned on him and told him that since he and his wife had moved to the area they had done nothing but create problems.
“She then carried on and said: ‘If you come out on to the street again – obviously she thought it was her own private road when it’s a municipal street – I’ll cut your legs off’. I shouted at her not to shout in the street like an uneducated woman,” he added.
The lawyer denied his neighbour’s assertions that he’d called her a peasant, uneducated, illiterate and stupid. “I don’t use such words. I simply told her not to shout like an uneducated woman,” he reiterated.
He also denied slapping her across the face and said he had merely pushed her out of reflex when she had spat in his face.
During his testimony the lawyer paused and complained to the judge that the suspect was making faces at him from the dock. Judge Yiota Kyriakidou instructed the suspect to sit down and although said she had not noticed any grimaces, informed the court that conversations, ringing mobile phones and grimaces were not allowed in her courtroom and that anyone wishing to engage in such behaviours should leave.
The lawyer has an appeal pending regarding his conviction last year which saw him spend a night in jail and forced to pay a €2,000 fine. The trial continues on February 5.