Lorne Castle charged over June 19 Bournemouth altercation

Lorne Castle has been charged with causing grievous bodily harm without intent after an altercation outside the Castlepoint shopping centre in Bournemouth on June 19 last year. The former Dorset Police officer is due to appear in the dock for the first time on May 27.

The 47-year-old stepped in to detain a suspected shoplifter outside a Nike store, where he pinned the man to the ground with his arm locked behind his back. The detention was described at the time as a citizen’s arrest.

Castlepoint shopping centre

Police investigated Castle after the incident, and the Crown Prosecution Service has now brought the charge under section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The case is framed around the allegation that he unlawfully and maliciously inflicted grievous bodily harm upon the alleged victim, Daniel Meyrick.

Castle left his role as a police constable at Dorset Police a few weeks before the June 19 incident. That detail places the case at the point where a former officer’s actions outside a retail unit became the subject of a criminal prosecution rather than an internal police matter.

Section 20 charge

Section 20 is the specific legal basis used in this case, and it is the wording prosecutors have attached to the allegation against Castle. He now faces a first court appearance on May 27, when the charge will be put before the court and the case will move into the next stage.

For Meyrick, the practical significance is that the alleged victim is named in the charge and the incident has already moved from a shoplifting detention into a criminal case against the person who carried it out. For Castle, the immediate step is the dock appearance in Bournemouth, where the prosecution will proceed on the section 20 allegation tied to the June 19 altercation.

Daniel Meyrick

The court date is the next step readers need to watch, because it is the point at which the charge becomes part of the public record in open court. Until then, the central facts are already fixed: a former Dorset Police officer, a suspected shoplifter, a detention outside Castlepoint, and a GBH charge brought after police investigated the June 19 incident.