Drunken thug smashed up his partner’s home
A DRUNK thug punched a door off its hinges as his partner and her children hid in her bedroom before trashing her house and smashing a mirror. He went on to put a hole in her car windscreen and threatened to smash up her shop.
Dafydd Merkel, 36, became angry after coming home intoxicated after watching a rugby match on February 26 and ignored his partner’s pleas for him to sleep at his mother’s house.
A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on Tuesday heard the Caerphilly resident was stumbling when he returned to his partner’s home and told her “No one is leaving”.
She called the police as Merkel banged on her bedroom door which she tried to keep closed.
Eventually the door came off its hinges and landed by the bed, after the defendant punched it. Upon being told the police had been called, he said: “Get them here, you’ll see a different side to me”.
Prosecutor Andrew Kendal said Merkel threw a vacuum cleaner and smashed a mirror hanging in the living room. After the defendant had left she looked at the room and a double glazed window and door windows had been smashed.
On March 29, the victim saw the defendant speaking to her mother in Caerphilly when he turned his attention to her and called her a “liar and a cheater”. Her mother told her to return to work but Merkel said: “I wouldn’t open the shop today if I was you”. She later checked her CCTV and saw he had attended her home earlier that morning.
On April 6, the victim discovered the windscreen of her car had been “put through”. Answer machine messages had been sent from Merkel, he said: “I put the window through on your car, answer the phone before I put your mother’s window through”.
In a victim personal statement read out to the court by Mr Kendal, the victim said: “I was in shock, I didn’t expect Dafydd to act as he did, I was just protecting my children and didn’t want them to witness him in a drunken state.
“I was upset by what happened and upset it would happen again, I felt upset in my home and anxious. I’m a strong person but what happened reduced me to tears.”
The court was also told Merkel drove off without paying for £30 worth of fuel at Morrisons in Bargoed on June 4. He was also found to be driving whilst disqualified and without insurance.
He committed a further driving offence on June 12 when his Honda Civic was found with false number plates registered to an address in Scotland.
Merkel, of Coed y Brain, Llanbradach, later pleaded guilty to criminal damage, threatening criminal damage, driving whilst disqualified, driving without insurance, making off without payment, and driving with false number plates.
He has more than 35 convictions, the latest of which was dangerous driving, failing to stop, and driving whilst disqualified.
Defence barrister Kevin Seal said his client hadn’t been directly violent towards his partner or her children. He said the offences were convicted when the defendant was in drink.
Judge David Wynn Morgan described Merkel as exhibiting “appalling behaviour”. He sentenced him to a total of 16 months’ imprisonment and made him subject to a restraining order indefinitely.