Elderly woman was threatened with bat

May 2 2008 by Chris Robinson & Hilary Clixby, The Journal

A BUSINESSMAN who plagued his neighbours with loud music has been jailed for threatening one with a baseball bat. Dale Ingham, 36, made life a misery for Elizabeth and Robert McGurk, in their 60s, for 18 months after moving into the flat above theirs in Watt Street, Gateshead.

He bombarded the couple with loud music and shouting, responding with abuse to requests to reduce the volume, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Last November 25, they were woken by music and shouting from his flat at 3.30am. Ingham, who already had a suspended jail term for a road rage attack on a bus driver, continued the barrage of noise until 8.30am, said Ian Palmer, prosecuting.

“At this time, Mr McGurk put the radio on in the front room and within five to 10 minutes of doing that, Ingham was banging on his floor,” he said. “A short time later, Mrs McGurk heard someone run down from Ingham’s flat and then heard loud knocking at the door and the bell ringing. Mrs McGurk went to the front door and saw Ingham there. He was bare-chested, dressed only in a pair of jeans. He was standing on his side of the garden fence and was seen to have with him an aluminium baseball bat.

“He then prodded the baseball bat towards Mrs McGurk’s face and said, ‘Turn it off. Because if you don’t turn it off, I am going to smash the speakers on the wall’. Mrs McGurk said he wasn’t coming into the house, at which Ingham jumped over the fence onto her side, then raised the baseball bat above his head and swung it towards Mrs McGurk.” Ingham admitted criminal damage and a public order offence. He was given six months’ jail – two months for the new offences with four suspended months activated. He was told to pay the couple £650 for damage to a door. In a victim statement, Mrs McGurk said she was “very frightened of anything else happening like this again”.

Gavin Doig, defending, said Ingham, who has a telecoms firm, had moved to the Quayside. “There is little I can say about the incident. He has no recollection of it.”

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