A man who was accused of trying to abduct a young boy from a western Sydney school has succeeded in having most of the charges against him dropped.
The incident unfolded in front of television crews at Bennett Road Public School in Colyton in November 2015 after parents called police.
Garang Aguern, 42, was seen grabbing the arm of a 10-year-old student who was panicked and clinging to a fence.
Aguern, who appeared intoxicated at the time, was arrested and charged with four offences: assault occasioning actual bodily harm; stalk/intimidate; assault officer in execution of duty; and common assault.
The boy was not related to Aguern but he did have three children at the school.
The 42-year-old, who came to Australia from Sudan almost a decade ago, appeared in Penrith Local Court on Wednesday where three of the charges were dismissed.
Aguern pleaded guilty to the remaining common assault charge.
His solicitor, Michael Moussa, said everybody initially assumed the matter was an attempted child abduction case.
“Police effectively just got it wrong,” he told AAP, adding police had charged his client with multiple offences when there was just the one act of pulling the student’s arm.
“In this case, police charged the accused with different offences arising from the same allegation, which goes against the very core of the administration of justice.”
Aguern is due to be sentenced on the single charge on March 28.