A BUILDER has been given a 12-month community order with 60 hours of unpaid work for assaulting his partner and damaging two cars.
Kevin Knowles, of Broadmeadow, Droitwich, pleaded guilty at Worcester Magistrates Court on Friday (July 24) to assaulting Gemma Hines and throwing a brick at her car and her mother’s vehicle.
Prosecuting, Owen Beale, told the court Miss Hines had called the 31-year-old and told him she wanted to end their 14-year relationship on July 7, so he went to their shared home in Worcester at 2pm and was very upset. They were in the garden when he started pushing her and she went into the fence before he left the property.
The court heard how, after he left, he received a phone call from Miss Hines’ mother who made a threat to damage Knowles’ car and so he returned home and threw bricks at both his partner’s black Peugeot and her mother’s blue Freelander. He then assaulted Miss Hines again, pushing his fist up her face. The police were called but the defendant left before they got there. He was was found and arrested at 1.15am on July 8.
Defence solicitor, Belinda Arris, said: “He is the only earner in the family and has turned to drugs which relax him but make him behave in a way that is not the right way. During the phone call she told him stop using the drugs or I am gong to leave you.
“He accepts pushing his partner and is ashamed and embarrassed – he has never done this before.”
She told the court the call from t he mother inflamed matters and he accepted the damage he had done to both cars.
District Judge Nigel Cadbury said: “When I consider all the circumstances in this case you can understand how this came to happen, when a relationship ends, it is a very upsetting situation.
“I bare in mind the violence on your partner was persistent but fairly minimal, you pushed her into the fence and that is really all that happened, inflamed by phone call by mother, which was not a very sensible conversation for her to have had with you but then you did take matters into your own hands by smashing the cars.
“Then a very short lived incident with partner when you pushed her with your fist but did not strike her with it.”
He ordered the defendant to pay £800 compensation to the victim’s mother and £85 in court costs, a £60 victim surcharge and a £150 court charge.
