A MAN with a ‘history of violence’ seriously assaulted a married couple – trying to strangle the woman and beating her husband with a riding crop – before biting a police officer while ‘shaking his head like a dog’, the Royal Court heard.
The alleged female victim said she was so scared she thought she was going to die when Shawn Le Lay twisted her head round, stating in her police statement: ‘I’d never felt so much fear before.’
Mr Le Lay (51) denies three charges of grave and criminal assault and one of malicious damage.
On the first day of an Assize trial in the Royal Court yesterday, Crown Advocate Simon Thomas told the jury of seven men and five women: ‘This is a case about violence, caused by a man with a history of violence.
‘He has a history of especially attacking people in authority, and biting features in a number of the attacks.’ The alleged assaults happened on 6 August last year, after Mr Le Lay received a letter saying he was to be evicted from his flat.
He went to a nearby flat where the alleged victims lived, asking for the phone number of the manager, but the man who lived there had been told not to give out the number and advised him to send an email instead.
Crown Advocate Thomas said: ‘The defendant walked into the flat and punched the man with a closed fist, causing him to bleed.’
The man’s wife tried to intervene, before Mr Le Lay ‘grabbed her breast and twisted it round with some force’, the court heard.
Crown Advocate Thomas added: ‘Then he tried to strangle her. He put his hands on top of her head and tried to twist her head.
‘She thought she was going to die. She said: “I’d never felt so much fear before”.’
Mr Le Lay then allegedly took a riding crop that the man was going to use against him and hit him over the back with it.
The Crown Advocate said: ‘He [the defendant] then tried to hit him with a bottle of whisky. He took a chest of drawers and pulled it down, and then smashed a chair.
‘He pushed the woman onto the chest of drawers he had knocked over.’
Police officers found the woman crying and shaking and she and her husband were both taken to hospital, the court heard.
While at the States police headquarters, Mr Le Lay is accused of biting a police officer, and only stopped when he was Tasered, the court was told.
Crown Advocate Thomas said: ‘He was shaking his head like a dog as he bit him. He left a three-centimetre bite mark on his calf.’
Mr Le Lay was due to appear in court via video link from La Moye Prison but refused to take part in yesterday’s hearing.
The trial is expected to last four days.
