Omagh stalker jailed for breaching order to stay away from victim

AN Omagh man has been jailed for three months after breaching a stalking protection order.

Raymond Newell (51), of the Old Mountfield Road, was sentenced at Omagh Magistrates Court this week.

Newell was one of the first people in the North convicted under new stalking legislation when, in September last year, he admitted stalking a 21-year-old woman and harassing her mother.

At that time, he was given a five-year stalking protection order banning him from contacting the women, their families, or entering certain areas of the Hospital Road.

However, in June he was accused of breaching the order by loitering outside the young woman’s home.

She told the court that on November 27, while returning home after painting a neighbour’s Christmas window, she saw Newell on the footpath looking up at her house.

When he spotted her, she said, he dropped his head and ‘scurried away’.

Newell denied the claim, insisting he had been ‘wrapped in a blanket’ at home all day.

But the prosecution argued he had been out visiting his mother the previous day and was ‘fit to bear the cold’.

District Judge Ted Magill convicted him of the breach, noting it had occurred barely three months after his previous sentence – nine months’ imprisonment last September, largely covered by time already served.

The judge also remarked that Newell had told probation he intended to appeal ‘no matter the outcome’.

Defence counsel Brian O’Sullivan asked for a community-based disposal, citing Newell’s role as sole carer for his mother.

But Judge Magill ruled this was not possible, as Newell had refused to work with probation while pursuing his appeal.

He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment but released on bail pending appeal.