A dog-owner whose animals attacked three teenage girls shouted anti-Semitic abuse at a medic who came to treat one of them, a court heard.

Clifford Nelson, 62, escaped jail with a suspended 12 month sentence after admitting  racially-aggravated harassment against the ambulance volunteer in Broughton Park's Jewish community and three charges of owning dangerously out of control dogs.

The medic had been called to treat a 19-year-old who had been bitten by one of Nelson's seven dogs after three of the animals escaped from his Devonshire Street home.

Two sisters, aged 14 and 17, had been bitten by his dogs a few hours earlier. Manchester Crown Court heard a statement from the younger one describing it as 'an awful few minutes'.
The sisters were walking along Baston Drive when the animals attacked them, biting each on the leg.

Nicky Moore, prosecuting, told the court: “They heard noises and saw a number of dogs running towards them. They both tried to grab on to some railings and turn their backs on the dogs and both described being very scared.”

They fled to a relative's house before being taken to hospital for treatment.

Around three hours later, on the night last March, the third victim was bitten, also on the leg, as she walked along Tully Street with her sister.

In a statement to the court, she described a pack of four dogs snarling and jumping at them. After being called to treat her, the community ambulance service volunteer, who himself had to scare the dogs off with a crowbar, followed them to Nelson's address where the defendant was sat outside, drunk on rum.

Slurs

Nelson twice banged on his window and shouted distressing anti-Semitic slurs.

Thomas Gilbart, defending, told the court that Nelson – previously given an asbo for playing excessively loud music - had owned dogs since childhood without problems.

He added that he had an orthodox Jewish friend and the behaviour was out of character.

Sentencing, Judge Mushtaq Khokhar said: “You may have Jewish friends, you have no doubt, but the abuse you uttered was racist, like it or not.”

He said that his dogs had escaped and the defendant had failed to alert the authorities, adding: “In the course of them being allowed to escape, three perfectly innocent people minding their own business near to where they live were bitten.”

Nelson, who was in breach of a conditional discharge for another  offence, was given a 12-month sentence, suspended for 18 months.

He must complete 50 hours unpaid work and was disqualified, for five years, from keeping more than one dog at a time. Six of the dogs have been re-homed.