‘You are lucky I haven’t killed you’
Sledgehammer-wielding stalker’s chilling words to ex who woke to find him at the end of her bed
ATHUG who threatened his ex-partner with a sledgehammer after she ended their relationship has been jailed.
Stephen Dwyer, from Accrington, stalked her for several days by turning up uninvited at her family home, bombarding her with texts and phone calls and following her around pubs in the town centre, a court heard.
The 36-year-old plumber was ejected by bar door staff on one occasion before turning up at her Oswaldtwistle home several hours later and smashing his way in using a sledgehammer.
The victim woke up to find her ‘drug-fuelled’ ex standing at the bottom of her bed swinging the hammer over his head and saying ‘You’re lucky I haven’t killed you’.
Dwyer, of Wordsworth Road, pleaded guilty at Burnley Crown Court to putting a person in fear of violence through harassment. He was jailed for 10 months and given a fouryear restraining order.
Stephen Parker, prosecuting, told the court that the couple had been in a relationship for around 12 months but his temper had become ‘erratic’ and his ‘temper would turn at the click of a finger’.
The court heard that on one occasion Dwyer ‘pinned’ the victim up against the wall and ‘threw her pet cat across the room’.
Mr Parker said the mother-of-three ended the relationship after dis- covering he had been using cocaine.
In the week up to the incident on November 20 last year Dwyer ‘constantly texted her and rang her’, parked outside her house looking in the window, drove up and down her street and ‘made her feel like a prisoner in her own home’, the court heard.
Mr Parker said on November 19 the victim went to several pubs in Accrington and Dwyer kept following her around and ‘ whispering vulgarities in her ear’.
The court heard how doormen at iBar ended up removing Dwyer from the premises and at 9.30am the next morning he broke into her home armed with a sledgehammer.
He told the victim: ‘You’re lucky I haven’t killed you. Why have you been spreading rumours about me?’
Mr Parker said Dwyer was ‘clearly under the influence of something’ and the victim ‘thought it was probably cocaine given her past experience with him’.
The court was told that Dwyer used the hammer to break into the property and the back door was ‘smashed to bits’.
He followed her around pubs in town centre