Workington man jailed for assaulting police officer and train conductor

A Workington man spared prison last year for attacking two kitchen work colleagues has now been jailed for assaulting a police constable and a train conductor.‬‪

Peter Thomas Dowdall, 38, avoided immediate custody last summer after assaulting two sous-chefs while working as a head pastry chef at prestigious Lake District hotel Armathwaite Hall, near Keswick, in February, 2019.‬‪

Dowdall Thad hurled a mixing bowl at one fellow employee and then struck him several times with a compressor device, before cutting the face of a second man - just an inch from his eye - as he recklessly swung a knife during a struggle which ensued.‬‪

After admitting two actual bodily harm assaults, Dowdall was handed a suspended jail term, unpaid work and a rehabilitation requirement by a judge.‬‪

But despite making initial good progress, Dowdall was back in hot water after two incidents which occurred earlier this year, both while intoxicated.

In the first, on January 22, he struck a PC on the side of the head with a flailing arm as he squared up to two officers seeking to arrest him while investigating an earlier incident in Workington.‬‪He admitted assaulting the emergency worker in court on February 7.

But just three days later he struck a train conductor to the face with an open palm in a completely unprovoked assault on a Northern Rail service heading into Liverpool Lime Street.

‬‪Dowdall, of Monkhouse Road, Salterbeck, Workington, was sentenced at Carlisle Crown Court today when Recorder Mark Ainsworth said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to suspend the eight-month prison sentence he was imposing for the latest crimes.‬‪

“It is clear that problems with drink have been haunting you, really, for a number of years,” Recorder Ainsworth concluded.

“The problem is that the people you assaulted in January and February of this year are people who are working for the public good.‬‪“There is an obligation, at times, for the courts to step in and protect such public workers when they are treated in this way.”‬