A van driver has been found not guilty of manslaughter after he was accused of attacking another driver after a minor collision.
Prosecutors claimed Oliver Brown hit Stephen Walsh on his doorstep after driving around the area after the accident and finding Mr Walsh's damaged white Lexus parked on his driveway in Blenheim Avenue, in Mapperley.
Brown was said to have remonstrated with father-of-two Mr Walsh at the front door but then allegedly struck him hard, according to the prosecution, to his face, knocking him directly to the ground.
Mr Walsh, who had been drinking earlier, sustained fractures to his head and his jaw and the injuries in due course, over a matter of hours, led to a bleed on the brain and his death.
Brown denied manslaughter. He was cleared by a jury on Wednesday (November 25)afternoon after a trial at Nottingham Crown Court.
The jury had heard he made prepared statement through his solicitor after he was interviewed under caution at length over the 1st and 2nd August 2018. Brown had denied being in an angry state when he set out to find Mr Walsh.
He maintained that the deceased was drunk and aggressive. He asserted that it was in this context he was scared when Mr Walsh lunged at him, so he acted in self-defence and with a pre-emptive strike slapped him with an open palm to the side ofthe face. He went on to assert ‘I think he stumbled but I didn’t cause him to fall to the floor when I slapped him’.
Brown's girlfriend Roseann Newton was found not guilty of assisting an offender between July 28, 2018, and August 3, 2018, after she was accused of deleted text messages and made false statements to police to impede the apprehension of 23-year-old Brown, now of Golden Sands Caravan Park, Ingoldmells. Newton, 23, of Findern Green in Sneinton, had pleaded not guilty.
