Dehydration blamed for attack on policeman

A company director convicted of assaulting a police officer during the Great North Run has been cleared on appeal after experts agreed his behaviour was caused by acute dehydration.

Andrew Wilson was arrested, handcuffed and bundled into a police van after he began acting bizarrely following his collapse part-way through the half-marathon in October 2006.

The 24-year-old, an experienced runner, was said to have gone berserk, hitting his head against iron bars, biting his own arm and struggling with a policeman.



He was charged with assaulting the officer and convicted last November by South Tyneside magistrates despite expert evidence called by his defence that dehydration and hypoglycaemia were to blame for his behaviour.

Mr Wilson, of Toynbee Teale Farm, Washington, had been sentenced to a community order, 80 hours unpaid work and ordered to pay costs.

But he won his appeal against conviction at Newcastle Crown Court yesterday after the Crown Prosecution Service commissioned its own expert report which also supported his case. His barrister, Paul Sloan, QC, told the court “The defence in this case has always been one of non-insane automatism.”