Man who attacked D-Day hero jailed
A 96-YEAR-OLD D-Day veteran who suffered multiple skull fractures after a “barbaric” attack by a hammer-wielding cold caller has stoically played down his ordeal, saying: “Worse things happen at sea.”
Jim Booth was left for dead in a pool of his own blood on the living room floor of his Taunton home after answering the door to a bogus builder.
The Royal Navy veteran Lieutenant Commander, who after the attack was forced to half crawl, half stumble out into the street to raise the alarm with neighbours as blood poured from his wounds, said he had not been left terribly “het up” by the experience.
He said: “Yes, well, worse things happen at sea as they say, in war.”
LT Cdr Booth was left with multiple depressed skull fractures and lacerations to his head, hands and arms after answering the door to illiterate Joseph Isaacs, 40, on November 22.
Isaacs claimed he wanted money for food but when his offer of cheap building work was turned down, he angrily pursued Lt Cdr Booth through his Gipsy Lane home, hitting him again and again with a shiny, new claw hammer. He continued to strike the greatgrandfather after he had collapsed to the floor under the force of the blows.
Yesterday, following a five-day trial at Taunton Crown Court, a jury found Isaacs, of no fixed abode, guilty of attempted murder after deliberating for less than two hours. He was given a 20-year extended sentence made up of a 16-year custodial term of which he will have to serve two thirds, plus a four-year extension.
Sentencing, Judge David Ticehurst said Mr Booth was an “extraordinarily remarkable gentleman” whom Isaacs “savagely attacked with a claw hammer which you took with you for that purpose”.
He said: “It was a brutal and utterly senseless attack on him.”
The jury had heard how Isaacs, who previously lived at home with his parents, had been sleeping in his car in the days and weeks leading up to his attack on Lt Cdr Booth.
He claimed that he was in the middle of a “nervous breakdown” having broken up with his girlfriend and had not eaten for four days when he decided to approach Lt Cdr Booth’s home.
The court heard no evidence that Isaacs was suffering from mental health difficulties and Rachel Drake, for the prosecution, labelled his defence “a desperate attempt to minimise what he had done”.
Isaacs, who appeared at court via video link from HMP Long Lartin, was arrested on November 24 after using the bank card he had stolen from Lt Cdr Booth’s home at a number of shops and food outlets.
Speaking after the verdict, DCI James Riccio, who led the investigation, described Isaacs’ attack on Lt Cdr Booth as a “prolonged and barbaric ordeal”. He added: “It was a cowardly act and it’s a miracle Mr Booth survived these horrific injuries.”