A MAN carried out unprovoked assaults on a teenage girl and a passer-by near Braintree Freeport, a judge has ruled.

Terence Van Immerzeel, 32, denied attacking two girls, both 16, in Charter Way car park, next to Freeport last September.

He also denied assaulting Travis Steer, a motorcyclist who stopped to help.

At Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court last Wednesday, District Judge Susan Holdham convicted him of attacking one of the girls and Mr Steer.

He was cleared of the third assault charge after the court heard there was a third, unidentified man at the scene. Immerzeel, who has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, claimed he could not remember the incident after a blow to the head.

He told the court side-effects of medication he was taking also caused memory loss.

At a previous hearing, the teenagers claimed Immerzeel had attacked them after asking to borrow one of their phones.

The court heard he punched one girl in the face before knocking her friend to the ground. He then punched Mr Steer in the head as he tried to intervene. But Immerzeel claimed he had been making sure the teenagers got home safely and had borrowed his phone.

He said: “I asked her a couple of times to give it back. She started walking away, I extended my arm out to touch her shoulder and felt a sharp pain on my head.”

Immerzeel claimed he remembered nothing after that moment, other than what he saw in a flashback weeks later.

District Judge Holdham said: “What I’m having to think about is whether his behaviour that night was as a result of a head injury. There was no mention of a blow to the head at the police station, there was no injury seen by custody staff.

“I don’t think there was a blow to the head, I am sure that neither girls struck the defendant. There was a possibility he was struck on the head at some other time, but we don’t know.”

Immerzeel, of White Notley, will be sentenced at Colchester Magistrates’ Court next month.