Why was 83-year-old farmer ever brought to court simply for defending his property?
Jury takes just 24 minutes to clear grandfather who let off shotgun
‘Law going in the wrong direction’
A FARMER prosecuted for shooting a suspected thief outside his farmhouse slammed the decision to put him on trial after a jury cleared him in minutes yesterday.
Kenneth Hugill, 83, smiled when the ‘not guilty’ verdict was read, and wept outside the court as he hugged family including his tearful wife Sheila, 78.
‘I’m very, very pleased,’ he said. ‘It’s marvellous.’ On the decision to prosecute, he added: ‘I didn’t think it was justified.’
The family criticised the Crown Prosecution Service and police, who took 15 hours to turn up at the Yorkshire farm and arrived with a squad of armed officers, forensic experts, an ambulance and a helicopter.
Mr Hugill’s son David, 50, said rural homeowners had a ‘right to defend their prop- erty’ when police were overstretched. The two suspected thieves were not arrested and appeared as prosecution witnesses.
Despite the jury clearing Mr Hugill’s name in just 24 minutes, his joy was tainted by legals bills of more than £30,000. He will be forced to take out a loan to pay them.
The grandfather was charged with grievous bodily harm, and potentially faced a lengthy jail term, as he was said to have acted ‘recklessly’ in firing a shotgun without warning or calling for help.
The jury heard he shot convicted burglar Richard Stables, 40, in the foot in November 2015. The farmer noticed a light outside at 2am and took his gun into the yard.
Father-of-three Mr Hugill has had hip and heart surgery, walks with a crutch and is hard of hearing, yet did not think twice about trying to catch criminals stealing diesel from his tank.
He saw the silhouette of a Land Rover, which revved the engine and drove towards him. ‘I pulled the trigger because I thought the car was going to kill me,’ he said yesterday. The farmer said he shot once towards the side of the vehicle and again in the air as the 4x4 sped off without lights on.
‘I didn’t want to hit anybody just frighten them away,’ he told Hull Crown Court.
Mr Hugill had no idea he had hit Mr Stables, who was driven to hospital by accomplice Adrian Barron, 44, a criminal with a history of burglary and violence.
The farmer immediately rang his son, who phoned 101 to tell police of the suspected theft. Officers were not told about a firearm being used. David Hugill said that at 5pm armed police arrived at the farm in Wilberfoss, East Yorkshire. ‘They told us they heard there were firearms and they were looking for hostages,’ he said. ‘We were very shocked.’
The farmer and his son were arrested, fingerprinted, photographed, had DNA samples taken and were locked in police cells for ‘three to four hours’.
David, a farm manager, said the family had endured ‘sleepless nights’ since but were delighted with the verdict. He criticised the decision to prosecute ‘when an 83year-old protects his isolated farm in the middle of nowhere and the police response is very, very slow’.
‘The police are pushed to the limit and they can’t cover the countryside. People have the right to protect their property in the middle of the night when there’s no response or back-up,’ he said.
‘We feel that the law is going in the wrong direction. The British people don’t seem to get the protection we should get.’
The farm diesel tanks were found to have been ‘tampered with’. David said it would have been ‘fairer’ if Mr Stables and Mr Barron had been charged. Mr Stables claimed they ended up outside the property after getting lost.
Judge David Tremberg said it was a case ‘the prosecution can’t overlook’ requiring ‘verdicts of a jury’. The CPS said it was in the public interest. Humberside detective Matt Hutchinson said the police response was ‘appropriate’.