Council house painter hit woman after drinking vodka

After an argument with the woman and others, painter decorator Stephen Lee Wood, 51, went to his van, drank a “vast amount of vodka” and returned, said Judge Simon Hickey,

In a bid to “punish (her) son or maybe in revenge,” the drinker tried to hit the son and hit the woman instead.

Jordan Parkinson, prosecuting, said the woman suffered bruises on her arm, soreness to the right of her face, swelling to her mouth and a headache.

Wood had gone to the council house in west York to paint its exterior and had announced his arrival by knocking on its window.

But after he had climbed a ladder to start work, the woman inside the house claimed he was working in an unsafe manner and the argument started.

After he went to his van and returned, CCTV footage showed him being asked to leave, but not doing so, and people pushing and shoving each other.  It also showed violence towards Wood.

Wood was working for a company sub-contracted by City of York Council to do painting work.

Wood was on a suspended prison sentence at the time for hitting a paramedic in the face three times, kicking them in the leg and other offences and has 44 convictions.

“You lost your temper, turned to drink again and very foolishly went back to the house. That is why you are here,” Judge Hickey told Wood. 

After reading a letter handed in by Wood’s lawyers from a Leed-based alcohol rehabilitation organisation about his efforts to deal with his drinking, the judge said the painter appeared to be starting to turn his life round.

He gave him a six-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months and ordered him to do 20 days’ rehabilitative activities and wear an alcohol abstinence tag for 60 days.

The earlier suspended prison sentence remains in force.

Wood, 51, of no fixed address but based in Leeds, pleaded guilty to affray and breaching the earlier suspended prison sentence.

Thomas Doyle, for Wood, said: “He is a man absolutely ravaged by alcoholism and poor mental health which have acted co-ordinately with disastrous results. He has relapsed into alcoholism and fallen into a dark pit of despair.”

He had lost his job, his home and his relationship and last autumn had been suicidal.

But he had been sober since December and was now taking medication that was helping him.