A JUDGE in Derry was told yesterday that a 31-year-old man breached a condition of his court bail by feeding his pet dog.
John Patrick Johnston appeared in custody before the local Magistrates’ Court charged with breaching his bail condition on Thursday night.
District Judge Barney McElholm was told that the defendant had been fitted with an electronic tag when he appeared before the court earlier this month on a charge of disorderly behaviour.
However, when he went into his back garden to feed his pet Alsatian dog on Thursday night, he unwittingly went out of range of the electronic tag monitoring station.
“Staff at the station contacted the police and my client was arrested, but he only went as far as his own back garden,” said the defendants solicitor Paddy McGurk.
“Apparently there is a problem with the technology. My client contacted the police as well as the monitoring station staff to say he was in his own back garden after he went out of range,” Mr McGurk said.
The judge said he was taking no action in the case.
“The law is not meant to be unreasonable nor inflexible,” he said. “Maybe someone should contact the monitoring company to enable them to make arrangements for this man to go into his back garden to feed his dog,” he added.