A 27-year-old man has been jailed for kicking down a woman’s front door in an “angry and jealous rage” and attacking the man inside until he was unconscious.
The Royal Court yesterday heard that James Martin Shotbolt had bombarded the woman with text messages before going to her flat and breaking the door down.
He then attacked her guest, knocking one of his teeth out and choking him until he struggled to breathe and fell unconscious.
One of his other front teeth was loosened by a punch to the face.
Crown Advocate Paul Lee, prosecuting, said the woman had been out with friends the previous evening and had seen Shotbolt at one point.
Early in the morning, he had begun sending her text messages and she twice replied to them saying: “Please leave me alone.”
However, he sent another five messages in the early hours of the morning, with one stating: “Mate I’m gonna come knock your door.”
“No longer my ‘safe space'”
He arrived at her home at around 07:30 and rang the doorbell. When she refused to let him in, he began to kick the door. The woman called the police but before they arrived, Shotbolt broke down the door and attacked the man inside.
The victim was found to have cuts and bruises to his face, the sides of his head, his shoulders and chest as well as his mouth.
The woman was uninjured but was badly shaken by what she had seen.
She later told police that she not longer felt safe in her home.
“Now that has happened in my flat I don’t want to go back there as it no longer feels safe to me and it’s no longer ‘my safe space’,” she said.
When interviewed by the police, Shotbolt claimed that the victim had thrown the first punch and he was defending himself – but accepted that he had “got much the better of the fight”.
Jealousy a “contributory factor”
Advocate Lee added that Shotbolt had previous convictions for grave and criminal assault, theft and causing a breach of the peace. The court heard that in 2022, while working as a steward in a bar, he had fractured a man’s eye socket.
Shotbolt eventually admitted the charges of breaking and entering and grave and criminal assault, but Advocate Lee said he had not entered his pleas at the earliest opportunity, so deserved no credit for them. He recommended a four-year jail sentence.
Advocate James Corbett, defending, argued that four years was too long.
He said of Shotbolt: “He admits that jealousy was a contributory factor.
“The breaking and entering and the assault were not planned events.
“No weapons were used. It wasn’t an attack that went on relentlessly, long after victory was secured.”
“This was extremely violent”
Commissioner Sir William Bailhache said the Jurats had decided to impose three-year sentences for each offence – but were allowing the sentences to run concurrently since they both originated from the same incident.
He told Shotbolt: “This was extremely violent. The consequences make harrowing reading.
“The attack could have had a much worse outcome than it did.”
Jurats Ronge, Cornish, Le Cornu, Opferman and Powell were sitting.