A man has been jailed for tearing the roof off his neighbour’s home following a bitter dispute over a garden fence.
Mark Coates was described as a “human wrecking ball” by the judge after he smashed a hole through the roof of his semi-detached home in Robertsbridge, East Sussex, and climbed out.
He started to tear tiles and chimney pots off the £450,000 home before throwing them to the ground. Once he had destroyed his own roof, he turned his attention to the roof of his neighbour, Janice Turner.
Ms Turner called the police as she cried in her garden and watched Coates destroy her property.
Police captured the moment on video where Coates, 57, used a hammer to smash the roof of both homes in the midst of a two-hour stand-off with officers.
During that time, Coates caused more than £200,000 worth of damage to his home and his neighbour’s. He was finally arrested and taken into custody.
Coates has been found guilty of two counts of criminal damage on the properties and handed an indefinite restraining order, but was cleared of two counts of fear of violence or harassment, after a trial at Lewes Crown Court.
He was sentenced to four years and four months in prison by Ben Williams KC, who said that the deliberate destruction of the homes was a “revenge attack” on his neighbours that had a “devastating” impact.
He said Coates had fallen on the houses “like a human wrecking ball” which left his neighbours, David Greenwood, 69, and Ms Turner, 66, upset and traumatised.
The neighbours said that the last seven years had caused them a huge amount of stress. Ms Turner was so upset that she could not sit in the court for the hearing.
She said: “I was crying. I felt very, very frightened. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was extremely distressed.”
Mr Greenwood, a mechanic, said: “He was systematically and vindictively destroying the property. He cut a hole through the joists. He took the staircase out of his house. His aim was to destroy and diminish its value. It was calculating and spiteful.”
One resident nearby, who didn’t want to be named, said that “Coates has got to be one of the worst neighbours in Britain”.
The incident culminated in June last year, following a seven-year dispute between the neighbours which started when a fence panel fell down.
After a new fence was erected to separate their gardens, the two neighbours disagreed over where the boundary was.
The court heard that after years of litigation, the case had eventually gone to the High Court, where they were warned that the row could result in financial ruin for one or both of them.
A ruling was made against Coates for contempt of the High Court. He was handed a £475,000 court bill and ordered to sell his home to pay for the sum.
It was three days before he was due to hand over the house keys that Coates decided to cause damage to the properties.
Per footage, he told officers: “I’ve had this house stolen off me by a judge and corrupt police. I’ll cause as much damage as I can to devalue the house.”
He then started to destroy the property and throw tiles into the garden.
Ms Turner said: “He was smashing a hole from the inside of his attic space and cutting the batons and knocking the tiles off the roof.
“He was picking some of them up and throwing them into the garden and towards me. I was standing by my greenhouse and I felt debris from the roof go past my face.”
She said the hole was big enough that Coates could climb through before he “continued to remove everything from that roof and then breached the party wall area and completely removed the best part of the roof at the rear of my property”.
The video, shown to the court, saw Coates tell officers he aimed to cause as much damage as possible.
He wanted the charges to be so serious that he would get a trial by jury where he could expose officials who had used “corruption and bias” to strip him of his home.
Richard Body, defending Coates, said the father of five was a dedicated family man of previous good character.
“However,” he added, “he has an aspect of his character that is stubborn which is how he has got himself into this very unfortunate position.”
