A ‘genuinely out of control’ woman attacked a neighbour with a crutch after being caught cutting down her wisteria plant, a court heard.
Atidel Boutara Cook, 50, was convicted of criminal damage after destroying the flowering plant belonging to her upstairs neighbour Pei Wong and assaulting her on December 17 last year.
She called Ms Wong a ‘f****** bitch’ and hit her once on the forehead and twice on the chest with her crutch after being confronted about cutting down the plant, Highbury Magistrates’ Court was told.
Ms Wong and her husband Louis Scott own the freehold of the Victorian house in Stanhope Gardens, Tottenham, north London, and live upstairs while Boutara Cook lives in the ground floor flat.
She said her husband had seen Cook cutting down the wisteria and pulling out other plants in the front garden as he returned home from work that evening.
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The couple, who said they did not usually interact with Boutara Cook despite having been neighbours for 20 years, went downstairs together to confront her with Ms Wong filming the encounter on her phone.
Giving evidence, Mr Scott said: ‘We went to the porch of the front door of the property and we asked our neighbour to… I forget exactly what we said but in calm, polite terms, “Please could you stop what you were doing”, and said that we weren’t happy with what she was doing.
‘We didn’t approach her.’
He added: ‘When she noticed my wife was filming her, she seemed to rather lose control of herself, started screaming abuse and waving her arms, she grabbed my wife’s phone.
‘She also then came up to my wife and struck her a number of times with her crutch.’
He told the court: ‘I was genuinely worried for my wife’s safety at this point because the behaviour of our neighbour seemed genuinely out of control,’ adding that he ‘caught’ his wife as she fell backwards after being struck.
Asked how she felt at the time of the alleged attack, Ms Wong said: ‘I would say that I was shaking.
‘I will let you know that I couldn’t believe that she repeatedly continued to hit me even though I didn’t say a single word to her.’
Video from Ms Wong’s phone was shown to the court in which Cook can be seen standing outside the front door holding large garden shears and Mr Scott can be heard saying: ‘This is really horrible, you doing this.’
The phone is then dropped on to the floor and screaming and shouting can be heard in the background, including repeated swearing.
Describing the footage District Judge Oliver said he could hear a ‘metallic-like sound, thumping on to Ms Wong’ which was consistent of the sound of a crutch.
Ms Wong told the court Boutara Cook had knocked the phone out of her hand, while the accused claimed Ms Wong ‘threw’ it.
Put to her by Bilal Miah, defending, that Boutara Cook had previously asked the couple to maintain the wisteria as it was causing damp in her property, Ms Wong said: ’The defendant never asked us, never in writing.’
She added: ‘No, the defendant never spoke to me, never ever I talk to the defendant.
‘The defendant never talks to us never ever, it’s always go to the legal, the lawyers, we never received any letters about the wisteria plants or any other plants causing her problems.’
Mr Miah suggested to Ms Wong that it was she and her husband who had attacked Boutara Cook, to which she replied: ‘I didn’t assault her, I didn’t scratch her.
‘The defendant come to me and with her crutch she hit me.’
Boutara Cook told the court she accepted she cut the wisteria but said the plant had been ‘dead’ and was affecting the air quality inside her flat.
‘Everything they made outside, it’s mine because we give them £12,000, £11,000,’ Boutara Cook said of the couple, adding of the wisteria: ‘They plant it, but we give them the money.’
The court heard she had not checked her leasehold agreement or whether she had a legal right to destroy the plant before cutting it and was ‘not aware’ she would need permission to do so.
Ms Wong and Mr Scott, who are architects, said Boutara Cook had right of access to use the front garden to reach the property and for storing her bins.
Addressing Boutara Cook, the judge said: ‘I find you guilty of assaulting Ms Wong by assaulting her three times with the crutch. I’m sure the plant belonged to the complainant and Mr Scott.’
He added: ‘In any event, I’m afraid I find your evidence to be palpably untrue and I reject it.
‘I am sure that you are guilty.’
Boutara Cook, who attended court with what appeared to be a red walking frame, was told twice by the judge not to interrupt while Ms Wong and Mr Scott gave evidence.
‘I’m not here to litigate 20 years of problems between neighbours,’ the judge said.
‘You just stay away from each other,’ he added to Boutara Cook as he released her on conditional bail ahead of sentencing on May 6 at the same court.
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