Wigan's Week In Court

A Wigan man who denies committing a catalogue of sex crimes against children over almost three decades will have to wait almost 11 months before going before a jury.

The case of Dennis Johnson came before a Bolton Crown Court judge again following charges for 21 separate counts of sex crimes against four children, including two rapes.

A trial had been due to take place in late May, but because of the Covid-19 restrictions, it was decided that the hearing should not now take place until April 19, 2021. He was bailed until then.

The 56-year-old, of Logwood Avenue, Worsley Hall, is also charged with intimidating a witness or juror, conspiring to pervert the course of justice and causing actual bodily harm.

Johnson is alleged to have committed indecent assaults on a girl under 14 years old between January 1991 and December 1992.

He is further accused of the same offence between January 1992 and December 1995, as well as the rape of a female under the age of 16.

In that same time period comes another charge of indecency assaulting a girl under the age of 14, and four times more between January 1995 and December 1998.

From January 1998 to December 2000, Johnson was again accused of indecently assaulting a girl under 16, in addition to a further charge of raping a girl between January 1998 and December 2007.

Other charges include gross indecency with a boy under 14 from 1992-1995, as well as two counts of assault a 12-year-old girl by touching her sexually, between the start of 2016 and last September.

Mark Wohler who was already banned from driving left his friend for dead trapped in the upturned wreckage of a stolen car he had just crashed has been jailed.

Wohler was at the wheel of a Ford Fusion which spun out of control on Bickershaw Lane, Abram, badly injuring passenger Christopher Rigby, but Wigan magistrates heard that instead of tending to the unconscious casualty, the 35-year-old scrambled out and into the car against which he had been racing.

He pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and when not insured, of failing to stop after an accident and failing to report it to police.

Jailed for a total of six months, he was also banned from driving for a further two years and ordered to pay a £122 surcharge.

A woman has denied a £1,500 benefit fraud.

Nicola Halsall, 32, of Browning Avenue, Goose Green, is accused of receiving credits of £1,207 and £317 knowing that she wasn’t entitled to them and did nothing to ensure they were cancelled.

After she pleaded not guilty to both charges Wigan magistrates adjourned the case to August 26.

A pensioner has been accused of drink-driving.

May Naughton, 78, of Lancaster Avenue, Golborne, is charged with driving a Chevrolet Kalos on Church Lane, Golborne, on the afternoon of Sunday, April 19 when she had 61 microgrammes of alcohol in 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35.

The case was adjourned to August 26.

A young man has been accused of fleeing the scene of an accident.

Adam Corless, 25, of Smethurst Farm Mews, Wigan, appeared before Wigan magistrates charged with leaving the scene of a crash on Ormskirk Road, Pemberton, in which a house’s garden wall was damaged and also failing to report the smash to police.

He has yet to plead. The case was adjourned until August 26.

A man has denied being armed in the street with a Samurai sword.

Mark Falla, 41, of Norley Hall Avenue, Norley, appeared before Wigan magistrates to plead not guilty to a charge of being in possession of an offensive weapon on his home street on May 16.

He was remanded in custody pending a summary trial at the same court on June 19.