Woman was kicked ‘like a football’
EX-COLLEAGUE DENIES ATTEMPTED MURDER
A FORMER B&Q worker sustained life-threatening injuries after she was attacked in her home by a coworker wearing steel toe-capped boots, a jury has heard.
Andy Hurns, 31, of Edgbaston Drive, Retford, who denies attempted murder, allegedly went to the woman’s home in Tunnel Road, Retford, at 11.45pm on November 24 last year.
After she answered the door, he attacked her, and she could be heard on CCTV, played at Hurns’s trial at Nottingham Crown Court, screaming and saying: “Get out of my house.”
Hurns allegedly punched her to the ground. She lay helpless on the floor in the hall, where Hurns was said to have kicked her several times to her head and body.
He dragged her in but people living opposite witnessed the continuing attack through the frosted glass of the front door.
One of those neighbours described the defendant “as if he was a footballer kicking a ball” and “as if he was trying to kill her”.
The neighbours called police. The victim sustained “life-threatening” injuries to her face so severe she had great difficulty breathing, said Andrew Copeland, prosecuting.
An emergency tracheotomy (an incision in the windpipe to relieve an obstruction to breathing) had to be performed because her nose and face were staved in so much.
Mr Copeland said: “The defendant does not dispute he caused those injuries but says ‘I’m not guilty of attempted murder.’ On an earlier occasion in these proceedings, he pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
“The Crown’s case is such was the ferocity of this attack, he only had one thing in his mind at the time; that was not to cause serious injury but to kill her.”
Hurns lived across the road from the woman a number of years earlier and they used to work at the B&Q outlet in Worksop and he seemed to share the same shift.
During the attack she has a recollection of him demanding cash and jewellery, the jury heard.
Police arrived and their presence may have disturbed the defendant. The victim was lying on the floor in the hallway but was able to indicate he was still upstairs. He made good his escape through a back window and went underneath a panelled fence before his arrest.
The trial continues