A MAN who knocked his former partner down by reversing into her with his van, causing a suspected dislocated knee, has been ordered to pay her £1,600 in compensation.
Craig Phillips pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to assaulting his former partner causing her actual bodily harm, and also admitted an offence of harassment.
Phillips, 43, formerly of Kilsby Lane, Rugby, was given a two-year community sentence and was ordered to take part in a Building Better Relationships programme.
He was also banned from contacting his victim or entering the Rugby street where she lives for the next five years under a restraining order imposed by Judge Richard Griffith-Jones.
Prosecutor Walter Bealby said Phillips had been in a relationship with his partner since the spring of last year, and began to live together that August.
The relationship broke down in April this year, and Phillips moved out, but continued to contact her by sending her numerous text messages.
She reported that to the police as harassment and send Phillips a number of messages asking him not to contact her any more – but he continued doing so and turning up at her home.
At the beginning of May she was at home when she realised Phillips was in the house, and tried to call the police.
But Phillips grabbed the phone from her, pushing her backwards as he did so. She tried to get away from him, but he followed her, so she ran into the garden where he pushed her up against a wall and said she had ruined his life.
He seemed to be out of control, and she screamed for help before he let go and she ran into the house and called 999.
While she was on the phone she went outside as Phillips was getting into his van and walked behind it so she could give the operator the registration number.
“But then the engine started and the van began moving backwards and hit her, and she was pushed back,” said Mr Bealby.
The victim said it then sounded as though Phillips had ‘floored it,’ and the van shot backwards and knocked her down before being driven away.
An ambulance arrived, and she was treated for soreness to her head, shoulder, arm, hip and left leg.
But she said when she went to hospital the next day she was told she had dislocated her knee and ruptured the ligaments, for which she will need physiotherapy, and she now feels ‘scared and vulnerable.’
Mr Bealby added that when Phillips was arrested he said his only contact with her had been to sort out the collection of his belongings, and that she had invited him in but then began shouting at him – and he denied assaulting or reversing into her.
Andrew Tucker, defending, said Phillips, now of Aster Way, Hinckley, had entered his plea on the basis that her injuries had been caused recklessly.
But he pointed out that there was some medical evidence to the effect that her ligaments were intact and there was no bone injury.
Of the harassment, Mr Tucker said Phillips was extremely upset that the relationship had ended, and was ‘too persistent in trying to restore it’ – but he now recognises it is over, and there has been no further contact.
Sentencing Phillips and ordering him to pay £1,600 compensation to his victim, as well as a soon-to-be abolished £900 criminal courts charge, Judge Griffith-Jones told him: “I deal with you on the basis that these offences arose out of your emotional state at the end of a relationship.
“But the episode which culminated in her being knocked over by you when you reversed the van could have caused far more serious harm. It was a reckless assault resulting in unpleasant injuries and distress.”
