He says he’ll shoot a lady! Neighbour is arrested... for singing Hendrix hit
A WEALTHY couple in a bitter parking dispute with their neighbour had him arrested for singing a Jimi Hendrix song about ‘shooting’ a woman, a court heard.
Michael Salliss, 74, and his wife Hazel, 62, told police that Terry Simou, 53, was threatening them with a gun. In fact, the pub band guitarist had been in his barn practising the rock classic Hey Joe, which includes the line, ‘I’m goin’ down to shoot my old lady’.
Officers held Mr Simou, an acupuncturist, at a police station for seven hours before releasing him after just ten minutes of questioning.
A judge found that the couple had ‘trumped up’ the allegations against Mr Simou in an ‘extremely serious incident of harassment’.
This was just one episode in a campaign of ‘bullying’ by Mr and Mrs Salliss in a longrunning row with two neighbours in disputes over a right of way and a boundary.
The couple, who live in an imposing £ 1.8 million oast house, have been left with legal bills of £500,000 after losing a County Court case.
Yesterday they continued the extraordinary neighbourhood battle in the village of Hurst Green near Etchingham, East Sussex, by asking the Court of Appeal to over- turn the ruling. Their lawyers claimed the previous trial was unfair as Mr Salliss had at times been too ill to attend the hearing.
Mr and Mrs Salliss, who run a construction company, have been involved in ‘parallel disputes’ with Mr Simou and another neighbour, retired music teacher Christie Greenfield, 65, for years.
The couple were accused of obstructing Mrs Greenfield’s right of way and staging a land grab of Mr Simou’s property, including a plot meant for parking cars outside his £800,000 home. Mr Simou claimed Mr Sallis racially abused him over his Greek origins, while Mrs Greenfield said he threatened her.
Judge Simon Coltart found against Mr and Mrs Salliss at Tunbridge Wells County Court, ruling that they had harassed both neighbours.
He said: ‘ They have attempted to bully their neighbours in order for them to adjust the boundaries to suit their own requirements – without any attempt at consultation or negotiation – and when challenged they resorted to abuse and hectoring.’ When Mr Simou was arrested in August 2014, he had been practising the Hen- drix song in a barn where he has a ministudio. The judge said: ‘The next thing he knew he was being taken to the police station. I am quite satisfied the complaint was instigated by Mr and Mrs Salliss and their allegation that Mr Simou was threatening to shoot them was trumped up.
‘It may have been the words of the song, but they were using it in a dishonest way to effect his arrest, and I regard that as an extremely serious incident of harassment.’
The judge ordered Mr and Mrs Salliss to give back a piece of car parking land they had ‘annexed’ from Mr Simou. He added: ‘I find that Mr and Mrs Salliss have waged a campaign against Mrs Greenfield, designed to persuade her to abandon the right of
‘Abuse and hectoring’
way and, in so doing, have substantially interfered with her use of it.’
At the Court of Appeal yesterday, the couple’s barrister, Matthew Collings QC, argued that Judge Coltart was wrong to go ahead with a trial when Mr Salliss faced surgery on the first day of the hearing before he was again taken to hospital during the case. The Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, who sat with Lord Justice Beatson and Lord Justice Henderson, will give a judgment at a later date.