COMMENTS on social networking website Facebook have again led to a Warrnambool man being involved in assaults and fined $1000.
Jake Hicks, 20, of Iona Avenue, yesterday pleaded guilty in Warrnambool Magistrates Court to threatening to inflict serious injury and two counts of unlawful assault.
Hicks is currently serving a community corrections order for almost identical offending last year.
Police alleged that on September 20 last year Hicks was out the front of the Warrnambool Centrelink office on Lava Street when he saw his 16-year-old sister and her boyfriend.
Hicks approached his sister and warned her about comments which had been made on Facebook.
He is alleged to have suggested that if his sister continued making such comments on the website he would knock her out. He then followed his sister into the Centrelink office, grabbed her by the hair, spun her around and punched her to the stomach.
Hicks then yelled at his sister's boyfriend and then struck him a number of times to the head before Centrelink staff intervened.
The man suffered a laceration to the top of his head.
Magistrate Jonathan Klestadt said Hicks was not entitled to engage in violence.
"I'm sick and tired of people responding to comments on the social media with violence," he said.
"Facebook should bring people closer together not drive people apart."
Mr Klestadt said Hicks' offending was committed in a public place and would have distressed witnesses, including Centrelink staff.
He warned the defendant that if a fine did not deter him and he again appeared in court then a jail sentence would be considered.
