Men face prison sentence despite being cleared of sexually assaulting man with hard-boiled eggs

Two men accused of carrying out a series of degrading acts on an unconscious, dying man have been told they face prison sentences. Nathan Smith and Daniel Yeates were found not guilty of sexually assaulting Phillip Coombs with hard-boiled eggs by a jury at Bristol Crown Court on Tuesday. But the half-brothers were convicted of causing Mr Coombs actual bodily harm during the incident at a flat in Patchway, south Gloucestershire, last year.

The court heard medics battled for an hour to save 47-year-old Mr Coombs after being told he had taken a drugs overdose. They noted his hair had been shaved, one of his eyebrows was missing and an obscene word was written on his head in red marker pen. During a post-mortem examination a pathologist found two hard-boiled eggs inside Mr Coombs' rectum. The cause of his death could not be proved. Smith, 35, of Mid-Glamorgan, and 29-year-old Yeates, of Patchway, were bailed until a sentencing hearing later this month – but were warned they face being locked up.



Trial Judge Michael Roach told them: "This is likely to be a prison sentence; by that I mean an effective prison sentence." Smith had changed his plea to guilty on the ABH charge during the trial. Yeates was found guilty of the same charged but both were cleared of sexual assault by penetration. During the trial the court heard that Mr Coombs was found to have had his head, left eyebrow and pubic hair shaved and his right buttock cut at Yeates's flat during a night in January last year. He had been unconscious for four or five hours before Yeates called an ambulance, when he stopped breathing.

The jury was told Mr Coombs was an alcoholic. The jury heard from one witness who reported seeing Mr Coombs lying on the floor, shaking, in what appeared to be a very uncomfortable position. But he was not being helped by Smith or Yeates – instead Smith was shaving his head with a disposable razor. The same witness also recalled seeing Yeates boiling eggs in the kitchen. Daniel Yeates told police he had given Mr Coombs a psychedelic drug called DOC, which he got from the internet. Both accused men said they had all been drinking and messing about and denied any knowledge of how the eggs came to be inside Mr Coombs.