Italian national pleads guilty to assaulting Irish football fan outside Anfield

By Kim Pilling

An Italian national has pleaded guilty to assaulting Liverpool FC supporter Sean Cox outside Anfield stadium.

Father-of-three Mr Cox, 53, from Dunboyne in Co Meath, Ireland, suffered catastrophic head injuries in the attack ahead of the Champions League semi-final first leg tie between Liverpool and AS Roma on April 24 last year.

He has been recovering at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire after he spent four-and-a-half weeks at the Walton Centre in Liverpool, a specialist neurological unit for brain injuries, following the incident.

On Thursday, Simone Mastrelli, 30, from Rome, appeared from custody at Preston Crown Court and entered a guilty plea to unlawfully and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mr Cox.

A separate count of violent disorder was allowed to lie on file by the Crown Prosecution Service after it accepted his not guilty plea to the charge.

Sentencing by the Recorder of Preston, Judge Mark Brown, will follow shortly.

Mr Cox's wife, Martina, was in court for the hearing.

Mastrelli was extradited to the UK last month after being arrested on a European Arrest Warrant in his home country.

Another Roma fan, Filippo Lombardi, 21, was cleared of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mr Cox in October, though he was jailed for three years for violent disorder.

A third man, Daniele Sciusco, 29, from Rome, admitted violent disorder ahead of the match and was jailed for two-and-a-half years in August 2018.

IMAGE: Liverpool fan Sean Cox