Pensioner who beat neighbour with iron bar, spade and saw gets 4Π years
AN ‘ARROGANT, cantankerous’ pensioner who attacked his neighbour with an iron bar, a spade and a saw during a minor parking dispute was jailed for four-and-a-half years yesterday.
David Leavers, 71, flew into a rage after David Hughes parked outside their houses.
The terrified 51-year-old managed to grab the bar away but Leavers started hacking at him with the spade, almost severing a finger and leaving him needing emergency surgery.
Mr Hughes managed to take shelter inside his car – only for the pensioner to jab at it with the saw.
Yesterday a judge said Leavers had resorted to utterly unnecessary violence as a result of his ‘bizarre and totally irrational’ gripe over his neighbour’s parking. Jailing him, Judge
‘Victim’s finger almost severed’
Rhys Rowlands said: ‘This case ought to serve as a warning to those who fall out with neighbours over trivial matters and then harbour an irrational grudge as no doubt you did.’
Mr Hughes had moved his vehicle nearer to his house in Peniel Terrace, where both men lived, in Llan Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, North Wales, on December 12 last year, as he was taking his elderly mother for a birthday treat.
But Leavers deliberately blocked the car in and when he was asked to move, lost his temper and grabbed a heavy iron bar.
‘You tried to hit him with it,’ the judge said.
Mr Hughes disarmed the pensioner and used the bar to try to defend himself, but Leavers grabbed a spade and struck out repeatedly with it.
One of his victim’s fingers was almost severed and a bone in another finger was fractured. He needed an emergency operation.
Injured and bleeding, Mr Hughes staggered back into his car to take cover but Leavers attacked the vehicle instead.
The former soldier had maintained his innocence throughout his trial at Mold Crown Court, during which he was taken to hospital with heart problems.
But last month he was found guilty of wounding with intent and of criminal damage to the car.
Anna Price, prosecuting, told the court yesterday how Leavers’s attack had a profound effect on his younger neighbour, on his mother and on his father who had since died.
Mr Hughes required plastic surgery on his hand and still suffers the mental scars of what happened in the assault, she said.
Simon Mills, defending, said Leavers continued to maintain his innocence, adding that his family were very worried about the effect a jail sentence would have on him.
He described him as ordinarily a warm man of good humour who suffered heart difficulties and had led a decent life for 70 years, includ- ing Army service. But jailing Leavers, Judge Rowlands branded him ‘ cantankerous, arrogant and obsessive’.
He said that while Mr Hughes showed commendable and remarkable restraint, Leavers had displayed ‘quite the opposite’ despite his age and ill-health.
The judge told him: ‘For a man of your age, with no previous convictions, you behaved in a quite extraordinary fashion.’
It was a sustained attack when he would ‘ just not let matters drop’ and sought confrontation to show ‘who was boss,’ the judge said. ‘He was able to block the blows with the bar, but you struck his hand with the spade so that his little finger was fractured and the bone in the adjoining finger was fractured.’
The judge said Leavers’s advanced years could not shield him from jail but he took into account his age and ill-health, and departed from sentencing guidelines by reducing the term he was imposing.
Judge Rowlands also imposed a ten-year restraining order on Leavers, under the terms of which the pensioner must not approach Mr Hughes or his mother.