Slasher drains neighbour’s pool in noise feud
A RETIRED engineer was caught on camera slashing his neighbour’s swimming pool because he hated to hear children playing in it, a court heard.
Stephen Gee, 63, was so fed up with the noise made by Jason Little’s children in the outdoor pool that he carried out a commando-style attack.
Gee crept into his neighbour’s garden in Puxey, Dorset, armed with a bladed weapon and cut a hole in the metal wall of the 30ft by 12ft pool, causing 4,000 litres of water to gush out.
Mr Little, a decorated Army major, and his wife Avril were away at the time and when they returned to their £600,000 home they found their pool empty and their garden flooded.
Footage from Mr Little’s CCTV camera, shot at 4am, showed his hooded neighbour sneaking towards his pool.
Gee disappeared behind the structure for 16 seconds before creeping back to his house. He left a note on the Little’s porch explaining how he had woken in the night to the sound of flowing water and found their garden flooded.
Poole magistrates court heard the attack was the culmination of a fouryear dispute between the neighbours over the noise made when the Little’s children played in the pool.
Mr Little, 46, and his family moved into the detached house in 2012. Gee soon took offence to his children using the pool.
“Whenever they used the swimming pool, they shouted over the fence at them and would play loud music and stare at them,” he told the court.
Mr Little said he checked the pool before he left to go away on the weekend of June 19, 2016, and the water level was full and there was no leak. WPC Charlotte Goddard told the court it looked as though the pool was hit hard with something heavy like an axe blade or similar. She said in the CCTV footage it looked as though Gee was carrying something heavy in his right hand as he approached the pool. Gee pleaded not guilty to criminal damage. He said the pool was dilapidated and that the cut was old and the lining had finally split. But district judge Stephen Nicholls found him guilty. The defendant, who had no previous convictions, was fined £500 and ordered to pay £650 costs and £250 compensation to Mr Little. The judge also issued a restraining order banning Gee from contacting the Littles for five years and from going on the curtilage of their property.