A MAN (19) has been arrested in Bristol and charged in connection with an assault which has left a 19-year-old rugby fan from Co Clare in a critical condition in hospital.
A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service in Bristol said Darren O'Neill appeared at Bristol Magistrates on Monday charged with causing grievous bodily harm (GBH). He was remanded in custody and is due to appear before Bristol Crown Court within the next seven working days.
James Egan, a Limerick Institute of Technology engineering student, had travelled from Ireland on Friday to see Munster play in Saturday's Heineken Cup Final in Cardiff when, late on Friday night, he was attacked in a pub in Bristol.
Police were called to the scene of an earlier incident involving Mr Egan. However, he appeared uninjured and was taken back to his hotel a short distance away. He returned to his room at that time.
It is understood, however, that Mr Egan left the hotel at about midnight and was assaulted by a man in a bar on Bristol's waterfront, only a few hundred metres from his hotel. He was rushed to hospital in Frenchay where he remains in a "critical condition."
A police spokesperson said yesterday, "A 19-year-old man was assaulted in Chicago Rock bar, Bristol waterfront, around midnight Friday. He was taken to Frenchay hospital with life-threatening injuries where he remains. A man was arrested soon afterwards at another bar. Darren O'Neill, aged 19, from Bristol, was later charged with GBH with intent."