A DRUNK man entered his ex partner’s home in the early hours of the morning after smashing her back door with a brick. On a 999 call, the victim could be heard screaming and crying as he entered her bedroom.
Thomas Morgan, 34, of Fitzhamon Embankment, Riverside, Cardiff, was seen on a doorbell camera stumbling from a taxi as he approached the home in Barry.
At 4.20am on January 29, the victim was awoken by Morgan rattling the letter box as he attempted to get into her house.
A sentencing hearing at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court on Monday, February 13, heard how Morgan had been released from prison the day before after being jailed for the battery of the victim.
He had previously punched the victim in the face, causing injuries to her nose and mouth. On a separate occasion, Morgan stole her car keys and took her car.
He was made subject to a restraining order preventing him from contacting the victim.
Rachel Knight, prosecuting, described the victim as “petrified” as she called the emergency services. Footage of the call was played to the court which showed the victim begging the operator to send the police quickly.
As the victim was on the phone, Morgan entered the back garden and the gardens of her neighbours where he stole a brick to smash the victim’s kitchen door and a kitchen window. He then entered the house and walked to the victim’s bedroom.
He asked the victim for money for the taxi and said: “Help me, the police are outside, I’m going to get years.” The victim shouted at him to get out as he bled on her bedsheets.
The victim could hear the police trying to break into the house. She asked Morgan if he wanted a tissue to stem the bleeding and went downstairs to let the police in.
Morgan ran out of the front door in an attempt to escape but the police later found him hiding in a bush in the garden of a neighbouring property.
The defendant pleaded guilty to harassment and criminal damage. The court also heard that Morgan has 31 previous convictions, including assaults on former partners.
In a victim personal statement read to the court, the victim said: “Thomas’ actions have seriously affected my mental health… I have never feared for my life so much as when he turned up at my address. I didn’t know what was going to happen. He destroyed me as a person, my anxiety, my confidence, everything. I didn’t feel safe in my own home… I feel when he’s under the influence of drugs or alcohol he’s unpredictable.”
In mitigation, defence barrister Richard Ace accepted the offence was “harrowing” and the fact the defendant was intoxicated, but he said there was no intention by his client to cause the victim harm.
He said Morgan had an ongoing problem with alcohol and suffered from depression after he lost his parents as a teenager.
Sentencing, Recorder Greg Bull KC, said: “You subjected her to an ordeal best described as serious and terrifying. Undoubtedly you have had a devastating effect on the life of (the victim).”
Morgan was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment. The restraining order preventing him from contacting the victim was extended to last indefinitely.
