Court Report: 27/10/2020 @ Snaresbrook Crown Court
I’m in Courtroom 5 before His Honour Judge L.J West-Knights QC for the sentencing of man who cannot be named due to reporting restrictions.
The court is told that on October 19th 2019 the victim, who had been married to the defendant for some 15 years, was getting her 5-year-old daughter ready for some afternoon classes.
The defendant (her husband) who was at that time the subject of a restraining order preventing any contact with the family, arrived at their home armed with a hammer and knocked several times on the back door.
Described as being “surprised to see him” when she opened the door the victim was grabbed by the face and pushed inside the kitchen whereupon she was hit at least four times in the head by what the judge described as a “significant claw hammer with some weight and heft”.
The court is told that the daughters screams alerted a neighbour who saw the defendant leaving with his daughter in one hand and the claw hammer in the other. The daughter told the neighbour what she had seen, and the victim was discovered unconscious in the kitchen.
Having been airlifted to hospital the victim was treated for a large number of injuries and spent 10 days in hospital. Her victim impact statement was read to the court and explained how she still has trouble sleeping and gets daily headaches and fevers. The victim worries for her daughter too explaining that she had witnessed the whole incident, and this will “no doubt will have a lasting impact for the rest of her life”.
The court is told that the motivation for the attack was a suspicion that the victim had been conducting an affair with the lodger. The judge remarked it was “plain he had developed an obsession” about the alleged affair but ultimately when deciding upon the sentence “it doesn’t matter one jot” if the suspicions were correct.
The court was told that after the neighbour had intervened the defendant had deposited the hammer into a bin and was later arrested on a railway line telling police in broken English his “wife had jiggy jiggy with many men”.
In mitigation the defendants lawyer explained that this was “a very tragic case” of a “happy marriage gone to the bad and worse”. He explained it was fortunate the injury was not grave and that he had “lacked a good support system” to help him.
In passing down judgement HHJ L.J West-Knights QC said this was an assault “of potentially murderous quality” which also “undoubtedly damaged the daughter to see one parent attack another”.
For the count of GBH the defendant was given a sentence of 11yrs and 8months. This was reduced down from 14yrs due to the credit for an early plea and the current conditions within the prison system, conditions which “were expected to improve”.
An additional sentence of 1yr concurrent was handed down for possession of an offensive weapon and 2 years concurrent for breach of the restraining order.
The defendant will become eligible for release 2/3rd’s the way through his sentence following the governments introduction of the “Extended Determinate Sentences” in 2020.
The defendant has not been named as the identity of the victim and the daughter would be easily guessed.
