W2C-003 Sunday Life 1-0.txt
Hounded - for taking a leak! Stephanie Bell

Spending a penny behind a wall cost and Ulsterman his freedom - and Scottish police a small fortune!

Police in Stranraer tracked Lurgan man Paul McCann to Northern Ireland last week for urinating behind a wall in Scotland a year ago!

He was then: arrested by the CID in front of his girlfriend and nine-year-old son in Belfast Harbour airport. Held for three hours in Holywood Barracks. Hand-cuffed and escorted by two Scottish policemen onto the Seacat. Locked in a police cell in Stranraer for seventy-two hours. Brought to court on Monday and fined fifty pounds for giving a false name and address to police in Stranraer on September twenty-fifth nineteen ninety-two. Mr. McCann, thirty two, who had no idea he had been summonsed for the offence, was returning to England, where he now lives, on Friday after visiting his mother in Lurgan.

When he was released he was left to find his own way back to Belfast and on to his home in England.

The nightmare ordeal related to an incident when Mr McCann was living in Scotland last year.

Drunk

"I had been to a disco and was pretty drunk. It was about two thirty am and I went to have a pee behind a wall," he said.

"When the police arrested me I gave them a bit of stick and a false name and address. They put me in a cell overnight and when I sobered up the next morning I co-operated fully with them. They told me if I didn't hear anything in four weeks that I probably wouldn't be summonsed."

Six weeks later Mr McCann left Scotland thinking the police had decided not to charge him.

He had forgotten all about the incident until last Friday.
He said: "We had just checked out bags in at the airport when a CID man put his hand on my shoulder and told me there was a warrant for my arrest.
I was devastated. It was really embarrassing being arrested in front of everybody, I felt like a murderer.

My girlfriend and son had to fly home not knowing what was happening to me."

He pleaded guilty to three charges in Stranraer District Court on Monday and was admonished on two - disorderly behaviour and urinating in public.

He said: "I had to find my own way home and spend another night in Northern Ireland before I could get a flight back to England."

Mr McCann works as an overhead linesman in Devon.
He said: "I 've missed three days at work and lost about two hundred and fifty pounds in wages. I can't believe that the police would go to so much trouble and expense.
If I had known about the summons I would have went to court. They didn't have to treat me like some dangerous criminal."

Police in Stranraer described Mr. McCann as "the unfortunate victim of circumstances."
Sergeant Neil McCleod told Sunday Life: "It is standard procedure regardless of the nature of the offence that a warrant is issued for the arrest of a person who fails to answer a summons.
Summons

Mr McCann has failed one way or another to answer the summons and unfortunately police are legally obliged to arrest him no matter where he is.

Friday was probably the worst day he could have been arrested as the next court he could have appeared at was not until Monday."
