A clubber who cut off part of a reveller’s ear in a knife rampage at the Birdcage nightclub is facing jail after being found guilty of three GBH charges.
Dominic Walton stabbed and cut three young men at the Withy Grove venue in the early hours. One of them, Peter McDonald, 26, had to have his ear reconstructed afterwards.
Walton, 24, of Doveleys Road, Salford , denied three charges of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, but was convicted by a jury. He will be sentenced at a later date.
Manchester Crown Court heard the early hours violence was sparked when one of his pals asked the victims’ group ‘Do you know who I am?’
The charges date back to the night of January 31, 2013. Walton could be picked out on CCTV from the top he was wearing, which had an image of Mike Tyson on the front.
One of the victims, Reginald Walters, 36, told the jury: “We were dancing and having a good time. I noticed one of my friends, Jason Cowley, was speaking to some other guy and they began to get into a bit of an argument.
"I went over to have a closer look, that moment I got punched from behind...I didn’t see that I’d been stabbed in the back until I got to hospital.”
Jason Cowley told court the trouble started after another group of males came up behind his group of friends.
He said: “It just didn’t feel right - you get a bit of a worrying feeling and you see the atmosphere has gone from really good, to intimidating. I turned round and as I turned round they were looking at us, talking about us, looking over to us.
"I noticed they were saying something. I said, ‘you alright? do I know you?’. One of them said: ‘Do you know who I am?’ He seemed like he was offended that I approached him. I said ‘I’m not here to create anything, we want to have a good time.’ The response to that was ‘are you daft?’”
Mr Cowley said one of his group said ‘is he mad?’, and that violence then broke out.
He said he saw a man standing over the second victim, Kola Oladipo, 33, making ‘jabbing movements’, and that when he helped Mr Oladipo up he saw his was ‘bleeding on both sides of his ribs’.
The third victim, Peter McDonald, 26, described seeing Reginald Walters ‘fall to the ground’ and then going over. “When I got out I found out I was bleeding from the side of my head”, he said, adding that he later found out a ‘piece was missing’ from his ear.
