He came at me with his fists and he pushed my pregnant girlfriend to the ground
PLYMOUTH killer Jake Davison savagely attacked a man and his pregnant partner five years ago – but police let him off with a warning.
Scott Hobbs today reveals the maniac also threatened to use a gun on him as he mounted a harassment campaign that drove the couple out of their home.
Scott, 25, tells how Davison, then 17, hit him 15 times during an unprovoked assault outside a Tesco in 2016, less than a mile from the scene of Thursday’s shootings.
The thug knocked his partner Sherrie to the ground, leaving her fearing she could lose her unborn baby. Scott, who was taken to hospital in an ambulance, told us: “The police didn’t seem to take it very seriously. They said he was ‘nothing to worry about’. If they had logged it as a proper assault surely it would have flagged up when he applied for a gun license. I wish I’d pressed harder for them to do something about it. I feel maybe this would not have happened.”
Scott’s ordeal emerges as Devon and Cornwall Police face mounting criticism over their handling of a gunman who killed five people in the deadliest mass solo UK shooting in more than a decade.
The force had stripped Davison of his shotgun licence following another alleged assault, before handing it back to him last month after he agreed to attend an anger management course. Davison, 22, was certainly full of anger.
He described himself online as “a terminator”, “a f ****** fat ugly virgin” and “incel”, slang for “involuntary celibate”.
The former scaffolder, who shot himself dead, had ranted about “mass shootings” and his growing sexual frustrations. In his last web post, two days before the killings, he said not receiving any likes on his Facebook profile “reminds you of how forgotten you are... how little you mean”.
And on Reddit, an online communities network, he posted about how dating site Tinder “makes me feel inferior as f*** I never get any matches”.
As the police watchdog launches an urgent inquiry into why Davison was given his weapon back, Scott is hoping they’ll learn lessons from his case too.
He said: “Sherrie was about 12 weeks pregnant at the time of the attack. I heard this clatter behind me and turned to see his fist heading towards my face.
“He had me down on the floor and hit me 15 to 20 times in the head saying ‘you shouldn’t have said that’. I was trying to kick him in the shins to get him off me, but he was too big a guy.
“He knocked Sherrie over while punching me and she landed on her front. She had pains. We were worried about the baby for days. .
“I’d never seen him before that
He had me down and hit me 15 to 20 times. I’d never seen him before SCOTT HOBBS ON ATTACK OUTSIDE SUPERMARKET
day and had no idea who he was or why he had attacked me.”
After being treated in A&E, Scott was visited by officers at home.“They asked me for a description, but didn’t seem to be taking it very seriously. Then the next day I was in the supermarket when I saw him again. I rang the police straight away and said, ‘He’s here, I can see him’.
STALKING
“He saw us and started strutting towards us. He wasn’t saying anything, but his manner was very intimidating. He was stalking me through the car park.”
Sherrie added: “He said, ‘I’m going to get a gun on to you’ and was pretending to fire a gun.” Scott said: “The police did arrive, took him aside and spoke to him, but they didn’t arrest him. We didn’t hear anything back until a couple of days later.
“He had claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. They just gave me a victim of crime leaflet.
“After that whenever he saw us he started trailing us. He knew where we lived and would stare at the window whenever he passed.
“I told police but they said he was nothing to worry about. We moved house in 2018 and a big part of the reason for that was him.”
Yesterday another witness to Davison’s temper told how he called an autistic man a “paedo” when he spotted him carrying an autism support doll in Plymouth city centre. Davison was a pupil at Plymouth’s Mount Tamar school,
which is for pupils with special needs.
Former teacher Jonathan Williams yesterday said the ex-Army cadet should have been automatically monitored by the authorities until the age of 25 and accused them of “not doing their homework” when granting him a firearms licence.
Nazir Afzal, ex-chief crown prosecutor for the North West, said Davison was “exactly the type of person the authorities should be keeping an eye on”.
Detectives last night continued to examine crime scenes and search Davison’s computer hard drive and social media. Scott said:
“When I saw the photos of him on Thursday night, I was in shock. I really believe if we still lived in the same place now, he’d have come for us. The police need to learn lessons from this.”
Last night, when asked about the 2016 incident involving Scott, a police spokesman said: “The circumstances surrounding Jake Davison’s shotgun certificate, and any information Devon and Cornwall Police had relating to him, are now the subject of an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. We are unable to comment further.”
He said ‘I’m going to get a gun on you’ and pretended to fire one PARTNER SHERRIE WHO WAS PREGNANT AT TIME