Woman Who Cracked Neighbor’s Skull With Hammer Gets 30 Months In Jail

A 49-year-old woman from Chingford in England has been sentenced 30 months in jail for smashing her neighbor’s skull during a frenzied hammer attack following a dispute.

When the convicted woman, Lisa Williams, hit taxi driver David Coleman over the head three times with a hammer, he was brawling with her brother in the street outside their houses.

On the day of the attack, Williams’ brother had smeared mud all over the Coleman’s windows. When David Coleman went to confront the perpetrator, the fight started.

Prosecutor James Benson told the court, “Mr Coleman is not a small man but fairly well built, Jonathan Williams is bigger built still and is in fact a younger man than Mr Coleman. Between the two of them punches were thrown by both parties, this was before Lisa Williams had anything to do with the incident. Ultimately the parties say Mr Williams gained the upper hand in the fight as the bigger and younger man, and both me went to the ground.”

Williams was reportedly only stopped from her hammer attack when another neighbor, Bernhard Mason, pulled the tool from her hand.

Benson told reporters that ever since 2007, the two families had been “neighbours at war,” and it was just a matter of time before something like the hammer attack happened.

Williams’ defense lawyer, Isobel McCarroll, told the court, “On the day in questions they were doing home improvements, her brother was out the front and she was doing some gardening, the hammer was in the hallway. She came across an incident that was in full swing, she was nothing to do with the initial fighting – she came across something that must have been a terrifying scene and she rang 999 first. She then went and tried to split the parties up, she went back in and she didn’t know if she was going to call 999 again and when she was in she saw the hammer – it might go a considerable way to mitigating the actions that followed.”

While sentencing Williams, the judge said in court, “You find yourself in a very, very sad situation as you no doubt appreciate, and it has come about because of the situation that has evolved between you and your neighbours. I accept that there was a substantial amount of provocation.”

[Image credit: Abc.net.au]