Jealous lover smashed up rival sailor’s yacht after spotting him on board with girlfriend
‘Jealous love triangle’
A JEALOUS lover has admitted causing thousands of pounds of damage to a yacht after catching his girlfriend in a compromising position with its married millionaire owner.
Dave Taylor, 54, had gone to Michael Hay’s £450,000 motor yacht Coco to look for his 26-year- old girlfriend Hannah Brookes.
Looking through one of the boat’s portholes, he saw Miss Brookes sitting in front of Mr Hay, 58, and performing a sex act, a court heard.
In response, a furious Taylor cut the mooring ropes attaching the twin-engine boat to newcastle quayside, as well as those mooring a £100,000 motorboat also belonging to Mr Hay nearby. The 60ft yacht was sent spinning down the Tyne by the high tide current with Miss Brookes and Mr Hay still aboard.
The smaller boat, named Vortex, hit the quay repeatedly until it got caught by a metal pontoon half a mile downstream. The incident caused more than £10,000 of damage to the boats and has left Vortex out of action for a year.
Taylor pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal damage.
On the night of the drama, Taylor – who lives on a boat in newcastle’s St Peter’s Marina – had been on a date with Miss Brookes to celebrate his birthday. However, Taylor told newcastle magistrates that during the date he looked at her phone and saw text messages between her and Mr Hay, a married father-of-two.
The pair then had a raging row, which Miss Brookes said resulted in Taylor throwing her phone in the river. She drove off, saying she was going to the casino, but 15 minutes later Taylor spotted the former dancer’s car on the quayside where Mr Hay’s boat was moored. He told the court: ‘I walked along the quayside and ... noticed Hannah’s car parked up.
‘She ran across the road and down the gangplank.
‘I saw her run on to Coco, I was a little surprised and I went to see if she was okay. I looked through the porthole, Hannah was sitting down on the couch and Mike was standing in front of her.’ In a police statement read out in court, Taylor added that he saw Miss Brookes performing a sex act on Mr Hay. He then cut the lines to the boat.
Sarah O’neill, prosecuting, told Taylor: ‘ You have been going out with this Hannah, you are jealous and you’re wondering where she’s going. You were jealous and that’s why you decided to cut the cables. It was clearly your intention in anger to cause this to happen.’ Yesterday Mr Hay, a retired car dealer from Durham, denied having had an affair with mother-of-three Miss Brookes, adding: ‘I would be so lucky.’
Giving evidence, Mr Hay – who had known Taylor for years as they both owned boats in newcastle – said: ‘I was aware of him crouching on the pontoon looking into my boat.
‘I thought that he was spying on Hannah – I said to her “don’t look”. Then she said “Mike we’re moving” and it was then that I realised he had cut the rope.’
Company director Miss Brookes said she had only been dating Taylor for five weeks before he had flown into the jealous rage, and denied having an affair with Mr Hay.
‘[Taylor’s] in a fantasy land ... He’s got issues’ she said. ‘I’ve never had an affair ... I ran to the boat because I was scared.
‘We were only together five weeks.’ She added: ‘I didn’t even know Mike before this.’
Taylor’s solicitor Ruth Forster had told the court: ‘It was part of a jealous love triangle ... You’ve had a falling out over a young woman and rightly or wrongly you’ve assumed he’s come to cause trouble, and you’ve presumed he’s cut the rope.’
But the chair of the bench Carolynn Hislop said: ‘The bench are of the opinion that the criminal damage was intentional, and we also agree the cost of the estimated damage to the boats ... It does go over the £10,000 damage mark.’ Sentencing will take place on October 5.