Golf club wielding thug is locked up
A‘ COMPLETELY out of control’ thug who bombarded his ex-partner with hundreds of calls and threatened her with a golf club has been jailed.
Zac Cullen, from Bacup, embarked on a campaign of ‘repeated criminal offending’ over a 10-week period against the victim after she ended their 14-year relationship.
The dad-of-two abandoned his van in the middle of Rosendale Crescent in Bacup on January 30 and ‘literally fell out of the drivers seat holding a bottle of vodka’, Burnley Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor David Clarke said that he was ‘shouting and screaming that he was going to kill her and slit her throat’ and hurled wheelie bins around the street in a ‘complete rage’.
Cullen, 34, also slashed three of her car tyres and refused to give police a breath test.
A week after being bailed he parked outside her home on Pennine Road in Bacup and sent her more than 200 ‘threatening and abusive’ calls.
In one call he said she was a ‘grass’ and warned ‘watch what happens now’. He also drove past her home six times in half an hour.
The court heard Cullen was bailed by police for a second time but again attended the victim’s home at around 6.30am on March 10 armed with a golf club.
Mr Clarke said he was carrying it in a ‘baseball bat type pose’ and ‘swinging it around violently’.
Cullen also told his expartner: “Watch, your dad’s getting this around his head”. The court heard how his partner described him as ‘completely out of control’
The self-employed businessman pleaded guilty to harassment, having an offensive weapon in a public place, criminal damage, failing to provide a specimen of breath and two public order offences.
He was jailed for 12 months, disqualified from driving for 19 months and given a 10-year restraining order.
A victim impact statement read out at court told how she is ‘ absolutely petrified’ and ‘doesn’t feel safe in her own home’.
Defence barrister Richard English said: “The defendant accepts he acted very badly.
“His actions were born out of frustration and a lack of thought.
“The defendant is upset to the core of his being that their relationship had come to and end.
“He said things in anger which he never intended would come to fruition.”
Judge Simon Medland QC said: “This was a prolonged course of repeated criminal offending against the same victim.”