A trio of thugs drove into a gran’s front wall, smashed her front window and tried to set fire to her living room over a Facebook comment she refused to delete.
The terrified woman watched on in horror as Benjamin Cahill smashed her living room window while Kelzie Foulkes drove at her home and crashed into the front wall.
Continuing the cruel attack was Richard Benn who poured fuel over the woman’s doorstep before setting it on fire as she was struck three times with a metal pole by Foulkes.
The woman’s daughter disturbed the attack before being assaulted herself as her petrified daughter who was just five-years-old watched on helplessly.
At Sheffield Crown Court on Tuesday, Prosecutor David Bradshaw, explained how the attack on November 6, 2020 unfolded, according to Yorkshire Live.
Mr Bradshaw said: “The woman knew Richard Benn and had lived in the same village as him for around three years. They had spent time together socially and he was known by her as ‘Tooth.’”
The prosecutor said Benn and the woman had come to blows after she had posted a Facebook comment about him, and he told her to delete it or he would “drive his car through her living room window.”
He said at around 6pm on November 6 the woman was in her living room in her ground floor flat, in Highfields, near Doncaster, when she heard someone say “come on” before the window was put through.
Mr Bradshaw said: “She got up and heard grinding and saw a car colliding with her front wall. Kelzie Foulkes got out with a metal pole and went to hit her three times. She picked up a sweeping brush to defend herself but it broke.
“She saw Benn get a jerry can and pour it on her door.”
Benn set fire to the liquid, “while smiling,” Mr Bradshaw said.
The woman’s daughter tried to intervene but was herself attacked in front of her five-year-old daughter.
In a victim personal statement, she said she had “never in her life experienced something so scary.”
The woman added: “It has broken me and my family apart. I never thought my children would see something like this in their lives. I have flashbacks and wake up sweating thinking someone is setting fire to my house.”
The woman’s mother said she has since had to be hospitalised after suffering with her mental health and PTSD and added that she feels she cannot trust anyone.
Mark Style, mitigating for Benn, said the former member of the armed forces had written a letter of apology to the victims for his actions and was “very lightly” convicted.
Benn, who was convicted in 2013 for wounding, had already spent 15 months in custody since the attack, Mr Style said.
He added: “He has been a model prisoner and a wing rep while being on remand. Those who know him speak highly of him as someone who is a likeable character.
“There is an entirely different side to him and what is clear in his letter is that he expresses what I submit is genuine remorse.”
Ayman Chokhar, for Foulkes, 28, told the court she is a business owner who at the time of the offence was suffering the effects of the pandemic.
He added that she had also just split up with a long-term partner but since the offence has put her energy into her business, which is based in Goole, and has been credited for helping her employees, one of which told the court Foulkes had “changed her life.”
David Lamb, for Cahill, 31, said his client was already serving a sentence for a previous conviction at HMP Northumberland.
Judge Rachael Harrison handed Benn a sentence of four years for arson while being reckless as to whether life was endangered, Cahill a sentence of one year for affray and Foulkes a sentence of two years, suspended for two years.
She told Benn the attack was “premeditated” as shown by his earlier threatening message to the victim.
As she handed Foulkes her suspended sentence, the judge warned her not to appear before the courts again and said she would reserve the case to herself if she breached the suspended sentence order.
Judge Harrison told her: “I don’t know what you were thinking. If you commit another offence you will go to prison. If you come back, you better bring that bag with you because there will be no second chance.”
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