Man shot at neighbour who tried to retrieve her pet rabbit
IT BEGAN as a petty dispute between two neighbours over parking.
But the 10-year feud created such “bad blood” that one fired an air pistol at the other as she tried to retrieve her pet rabbit from his lawn.
Paul Booth, 52, was furious when he spotted Susan Davis, a civil servant, in his garden. “What the f--- are you doing in my garden?” he yelled.
Miss Davis, 49, explained that she was just trying to get the rabbit and claimed she had knocked on his door several times before crawling through the broken fence.
Booth replied she should have knocked harder, adding: “If you don’t get out... I’m going to get a firearm,” before disappearing behind a slammed door.
“My blood went cold,” she said. “It was so extreme and I didn’t know what he was capable of.”
The next thing Miss Davis was aware of, she claimed, was something whistling past her ear. “He came out behind me and opened fire. I didn’t know what was happening until I heard the bullet whizz past,” she said. “I was shocked. Thankfully, I’d just ducked out of the way because the rabbit moved… He could have killed me if he’d hit me in the right place.”
Booth, who is unemployed and relies on family handouts due to back problems, admitted threatening behaviour at Manchester Magistrates’ Court and was sentenced to 10 weeks imprisonment, suspended for 12 months.
He was also ordered to pay Miss Davis £100 compensation and £250 prosecution costs.
Humayun Khan, defending, said Booth, a member of a shooting club, claimed that although he had fired the pistol, it was not aimed at her.
“There had been friction between the neighbours for some 10 years and unfortunately this developed into bad blood between them and created a neighbours’ dispute,” he said. “There were no pellets in the gun – it was simply gas. He did not mean to cause anybody harm, just fear, to get her off his property.”
The latest incident occurred in March when Oreo, her lop-eared lionhead rabbit, escaped from her hutch.
A week earlier, Miss Davis had seen Booth polishing his gun and took a picture of it, believing that it might come in useful. Police arrested him when she showed officers the photograph.