Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Man jailed for attack with crutch
A WOMAN was left covered in bruises after being battered with a crutch by her partner in Dundee.
Darren Drapajlo claimed he had no memory of beating the woman in a row over money last year.
The repeat offender was locked up after he admitted carrying out the assault at the home they used to share on Dundee’s Mains Road.
The city’s sheriff court was told how the pair had been in an on-off relationship for several years.
Throughout the morning in the run-up to the incident, they had been arguing about cash before the dispute took a violent turn.
“The accused then picked up the complainer’s crutch and began hitting her to the head and body repeatedly,” fiscal depute Joanne Ritchie said.
“The complainer tried to prevent the accused from doing this and tried to restrain him.
“As a result, she landed on the sofa in the living room.”
The incident calmed down and the woman remained with Drapajlo, 42, before informing her support worker about the attack the next day.
The worker contacted police who arrived to find the woman was upset, with visible scratches and bruises. Ms Ritchie said the woman had a cut to the top of her head, bruising to her face and neck and “multiple” bruises on her body.Drapajlo, currently a prisoner at HMP Perth, pled guilty to assaulting his then-partner by repeatedly striking her on the head and body with the crutch to her injury on June 7 last year.
Solicitor Lee Qumsieh said despite having a raft of previous convictions, Drapajlo had never been hauled to court for domestic offences.
He said his client remembered nothing of the attack due to his pernicious addiction to diazepam and other illicit substances.
Mr Qumsieh told Sheriff Alastair Carmichael: “He was struggling badly with a drug problem at the time.
“He is now clean of drugs within the prison system.
“He has now accepted that this must have happened in the way described but he has no recollection at all.
“It seems to be very much out of character. He is appalled by the behaviour which he now accepts he carried out.
“The relationship is completely over and he understands that.”
Drapajlo was sentenced to 18 months in prison and was made subject to a non-harassment order designed to keep him away from the woman for the next two years.