A mum has told how she feared for her life as her former partner's brother rammed a digger into her legs, her car and her house. Paula Brown said Mark Holmes had "the most evil look on his face" as he went on the JCB rampage in Blackwood.
Last week we reported how Holmes, 56, had been spared prison after leaving Ms Brown with heavy bruising, causing £28,000 worth of damage to her home and writing off two cars in what Newport Crown Court heard was a drunken "revenge" attack. Now Ms Brown, 50, has spoken to WalesOnline about her terror on the afternoon of November 8 last year when Holmes targeted the house while she and her 15-year-old son were inside.
The court heard the attack came after a "culmination of family problems, misunderstandings and disagreements" but Ms Brown said she had done nothing to provoke a retaliation and the "revenge" was based on falsehoods. Her son had come home from school that day because he was ill and they were in the living room watching TV at 1pm when Ms Brown heard a noise outside.
"I thought: 'What the hell is that noise? Is it a delivery truck' My son was drifting in and out of sleep on the sofa. I looked through the window and was like: 'Oh my God, it's a JCB coming towards my house.'"
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As Ms Brown went to the front door, the digger hit her Ford Focus, which had been a gift from her children. She stepped outside and realised the man at the wheel was Holmes. "He looked at me and there was pure evil on his face," she said. "He lifted my car in the air, it must have been about 7ft, and dropped it inches away from me. I was in total shock, gobsmacked."
By this point Ms Brown was just in front of the door and her son, who is Holmes' nephew, was behind her in the doorway. Ms Brown recalls shouting at Holmes, who was holding his phone in the cab: "What are you doing, you stupid idiot?"
She said Holmes then bashed the digger into the brick wall of the house. "I'm shouting and bawling, and he comes at me then. He was looking at me with the most evil look on his face and he headed straight for me... He smashed the bucket down on my left foot and almost ripped my boot off. He caught both of my feet but my left was worse. There was just enough room to move my foot. If I hadn't, it would have gone over me and I think it would have ended up killing me."
Ms Brown's son was banging on the JCB's glass partition pleading with Holmes to stop. "My son was very, very brave," she said. "I've told him: 'You had better not be that brave again.' Mark had no regard for him whatsoever, he just continued."
Holmes rammed the digger into Ms Brown's toilet wall, which is directly beneath her 22-year-old daughter's bedroom. "If she'd been at home and her floor had collapsed, she would have been a goner," Ms Brown added.
Holmes then turned his attention to a Ford Fiesta which belonged to one of Ms Brown's friends and was parked next to the house. He smashed the car into a tree in her garden as well as the brick wall around the yard before driving away. Ms Brown said Holmes did not say a word to her at any point in the attack, which was filmed by a worker in a nearby van who could be heard saying: "Got it all on film for you, alright mate?"
For three months Ms Brown, her son and daughter have been unable to stay in the home, which sustained damage to the toilet, piping, brickwork and front door frame. Pobl, the housing association which owns the property, has warned it is structurally unsafe and has put the family in temporary accommodation for what is expected to be another six weeks of repair work.
An X-ray showed Ms Brown had no fractures but both of her feet were covered in "dark, nasty bruising" and she is still struggling with pain from what feels like a "ridge" inside her left leg. More serious, though, has been the psychological impact.
"I can't sleep," she said. "I wake up every few hours, having nasty dreams and feeling like I'm being crushed. My first week in the place we're staying, someone must have been drunk, banging the bus stop at the bottom of the street, and I was in a panic after what I'd been through."
She was also upset to lose the Ford Focus which her children had spent thousands of pounds on the year before. "It was second-hand but I thought the world of it," she said. "It was immaculate, such a lovely car. The roof was all pushed up and everything was smashed. It was absolutely awful to see it like that."
Ms Brown, who had been living in the house for around 15 years, added: "I'm worried about damp because there's no heating on. The furniture and everything might be ruined with all the rain and cold we've had. There are gaps in the bricks and under the door where rain could get in because of the damage. All we want to do is get in there and make it more like our home. We have lovely neighbours who have been unbelievably supportive. My son loves it there but he's also scared to go back. He's got his GCSEs to do and the internet where we are is rubbish."
After the attack Holmes, of Brynheulog Street in Penybryn, drove to Blackwood Police Station and confessed he had taken his son's digger. He pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking, damaging property, dangerous driving and drink-driving. He denied assault occasioning actual bodily harm but admitted the lesser charge of battery.
Ms Brown was disappointed by the sentence of a 16-month jail term suspended for two years. Judge Duncan Bould said Holmes escaped custody "by a whisker". He was banned from driving for three years and ordered to wear an alcohol abstinence monitoring tag for 120 days and to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
Although she felt grateful for a 10-year restraining order, Ms Brown said: "Everyone is saying to me he got off way too lightly for how bad the crime was and how much worse things could have been."
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