Jury clears Oxford man accused of Plush nightclub GBH

Noel Har, 23, said he’d swung his hand, which contained a half-drunk bottle of Corona lager, at the man in order to get him to loosen his grip around his neck.

Jurors at Oxford Crown Court heard that the victim had taken offence when Har pushed the man’s girlfriend on the dancefloor of Plush Lounge, central Oxford, in the early hours of February 21, 2020.

The man had Har pinned against the wall by his neck, the court was told.

A bouncer went to separate the men but said under cross-examination from the defendant’s barrister that he couldn’t be sure if Har threw the blow before or after he’d broken the pair apart.

“I just got back to the defendant and I asked him ‘why have you done this? You could have killed him’,” he said of the aftermath of the glassing.

“The guy was very calm and said he couldn’t breathe. The other guy was strangling him round the neck.”

Plush Lounge in Frewin Court off Cornmarket Street, Oxford..22/05/2019.Picture by Ed Nix.

The victim, who woke up in the John Radcliffe Hospital after 2am with no memory of the incident, suffered a cut so deep it reached his cheekbone.

Har – back from university for half term – had been out earlier that evening at two bars on Cowley Road with his brother.

The men took the bus into town, visited Hanks, on Queen Street, and another drinking establishment before going to Plush at around midnight. He said he was ‘five or six’ on a drunkenness scale from one to 10.

He was on the dancefloor when he was shoved by a blonde woman ‘quite hard’, he said. He returned the push and the next thing he knew his victim was throttling him.

The man told jurors: “I was scared. I tried to get him off me and I didn’t realise I had the bottle in my hand.” He swung his arm not realising he was holding the Corona, he said.

Later, when he was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital himself for a check up, he became verbally abusive to the police officers accompanying him.

He told one officer: “You’re going to f***ing shoot me like the Americans shoot black people.” He added, later: “I demand you turn your f***ing camera off you thick bald ****.”

Har said from the witness stand that he was upset at being arrested, as he regarded his victim as the aggressor.

Oxford Crown Court GV general view scene setter .23/01/2021.Picture by Ed Nix.

The jury heard that he’d been the victim of assaults himself in 2013, 2014 and 2017. He suffered from complex post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.

Closing the defence case, barrister Gordana Austin said: “It is a matter for you to consider whether somebody with Mr Har’s characteristics, somebody who had been violently assaulted on previous occasions and given his difficulties with his mental health, whether his reactions were reasonable and whether he acted in reasonable self-defence.

“It is for you to use your common sense and your life experience to decide whose account you believe.”

The jury took less than 45 minutes to find Har, of Humfrey Road, Oxford, not guilty of causing grievous bodily harm.

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