Downpatrick man facing jail after battering sister in attack

Downpatrick man facing jail after battering sister in attack

6 June 2012

A DOWNPATRICK man has been convicted of assaulting his sister and destroying her glasses during an incident outside their mother’s home last summer.

Patrick Hampton, of Slievegrane Road, assaulted Brenda Murphy when she arrived at their mother’s house at 7.30am on August 24 to cut flowers for a wedding.

She told Downpatrick District Court on Tuesday that she saw a van in the driveway when she arrived.

She was shocked when she saw the defendant, with whom she had a troubled history. She said he assaulted her after spraying her with water and throwing gravel at her, breaking her glasses.

“When I saw him it was instant fear,” she said. “He called me whore, slut and gave me lots of verbal abuse.”

Mrs. Murphy said she walked on towards the flower beds when Hampton grabbed her.

“He grabbed me by the top of my head and proceeded to drag me across the tarmac drive to the cement mixer, he was shaking me like a doll,” she said.

“He dragged me by the hair and when I was on the ground he held me down, he put his knee on my neck and held me down that way. By this time I was screaming.

“He put his knee across my throat, I could not breathe and that stopped me from shouting.”

Mrs. Murphy said the attack came to an end when she managed to shout that she was going to call the police. She said she had swollen lips and cheek following the attack, while her neck and back were sore.

Hampton denied the assault and said his sister had come towards him with a solar light in her hand and threw it at his face.

He claimed he dodged the lamp and it hit his shoulder, and she then came towards him again in an aggressive manner.

He told the court he restrained her on the ground in a martial arts move he deemed safe.

He denied damaging her glasses.

A prosecutor said Hampton had little to fear from his sister and had treated her “like an animal.”

Deputy District Judge Mr. John Meehan said he found the defendant’s account “sinister and rather repellant.”

Pre -sentence reports were ordered for next month.