Children witness threat to slit naked man’s throat

‘I ran out and screamed for help from a neighbour’

A mum-of-two told a jury how armed robbers threatened to slit her partner’s throat in front of her young children after they burst into their trailer home in Yalding demanding money. Terrified Chloe Smith told Maidstone Crown Court how she feared her partner Tom Fellowes was going to die.

She said she was asleep on the sofa at The Paddocks, Benover Road but at 3am she was awoken by her partner shouting: “Who’s out there?”

She told how, despite being “stark naked”, he grabbed a machete, which he kept in the cupboard, and went outside to confront the men.

Ms Smith claimed: “I realised that someone was there. Then the glass front door was smashed.”

She was pushed backwards while Mr Fellowes was dragged through the broken front door smothered in blood.

“I couldn’t tell what injuries he had,” she added.

“I didn’t know how many people ended up inside the caravan whether it was four, five or six. “I was screaming and panicking . Tom’s head was pulled back and a knife put under his chin. One of the men said: ‘Just shoot him.’

“Someone had also brought a rope and they tried to tie him up. I kept saying stop it because it was in front of the kids. I thought at one point Tom was going to die. I said stop you are frightening the children.

“I ran out the front door onto the patio with one of my children in my arms and screamed for help from a neighbour. “I then got hauled from behind. The man put a hand over my mouth to stop me screaming and pulled me back inside. Then I remember a voice saying: ‘Come on let’s go’.”

Six men and a woman are on trial accused of being either ‘principals or accessories’ in the raid in the early hours of March 16 last year.