A man “looked like a zombie” as he smashed through a family’s front door with an axe before pulling a terrified mum’s arm onto the broken glass.
Michael Smith left Catherine McLoughlin with injuries to her arm after his attack on her home last November, part of a wider incident that also saw him smash up his ex-partner’s house and his own car.
Ms McLoughlin told police Smith, her sister’s ex partner, “looked like a character from The Walking Dead” as he launched a drunken attack on her home on November 20.
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Simon Hussey, prosecuting, said the 36-year-old then went to Broad Lane, where Catherine McLoughlin and her sister Donna Payne live in neighbouring houses.
Smith and Ms Payne had previously been in a long term relationship but had separated.
She had received messages from him days earlier that made her concerned for his mental health and had previously tried to seek support to assist him.
However, families at both houses were woken in the middle of the night by a heavily drunken Smith screaming in the road.
Then, in an apparent case of mistaken identity, he went to Ms McLoughlin’s front door.
As she got to the bottom of the stairs he began to smash through one of the windows with the axe.
As Ms McLoughlin tried to stop him getting in he grabbed her arm and pulled it towards him, slashing it on the glass.
He then carried out similar axe attacks on Ms Payne’s house and on his own car, though no one was injured in either attack.
Police, who had been alerted to Smith by a member of the public who had seen him carrying the axe just before the attack, then arrived at the house and arrested him.
Reading from Ms McLoughlin’s statement, Mr Hussey said: “He did not appear all there and his eyes looked like a zombie.
“He appeared like a character out of the TV programme ‘The Walking Dead’.”
A probation officer who interviewed Smith in the aftermath of the attack said they felt 75% of blame for the attack could be placed on Smith’s intoxication, with the other 25% being down to stress.
Ken Heckles, defending, said Smith was clearly in a poor mental state when the attack occurred, with the pandemic having reduced the services available to him immediately before he carried out the offence.
He appealed to the judge to suspend Smith’s jail term, saying he was a man of previous good character and that he had been a hard working man prior to being remanded in prison after the attack.
Mr Heckles said: “What is clear is that he was in a bad place. It is obviously an aggravating feature that alcohol was involved but that is only part of the problem.
“His mental health and his depression were a factor in this incident.”
He said Smith could be managed within the community and had a realistic chance of rehabilitation.
However, the judge, Recorder Andrew McLoughlin, said the nature of Smith’s attack meant only an immediate jail term would be appropriate.
He said both the McLoughlin and Payne families had been subjected to “frightening occurrences”.
Of the injuries to Ms McLoughlin, Recorder McLoughlin (no relation) said: “I have seen the physical effects that pulling someone’s arm through a shattered window.
“For whatever reason, you were out of control, significantly out of control.
“Perhaps, to use the vernacular, you can not believe it was yourself, that you did that.”
Smith, of Avis Walk, was sentenced to 16 months in prison after pleading guilty to wounding, possession of a bladed article and two counts of criminal damage.
A restraining order was also granted preventing him from contacting Ms McLoughlin and her family.
