Nathan Sumner, aged 35, has pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm but denies two other charges – one of attempted murder and an alternative count of causing GBH with intent.
Sam Green QC, prosecuting, said Sumner had been taunting PC Bates as he hit her with the axe, asking if she was going to kill him, and ‘pausing to get the best angles to deliver his targeted assault’
Mr Green said: “On Wednesday April 13, Nathan Sumner attacked an on-duty police officer, PC Lisa Bates, with an axe in the Gleadless area of Sheffield.”
“He chased her, then when he caught her, he struck her with the axe to the leg, head and hand.”
“The flesh on the crown of her head was split open deeply and the index finger of her right hand was left hanging off.”
“She suffered other injuries too, including a fractured skull. She required surgery.”
“The prosecution say that, in setting about PC Bates in the way he did, as forcefully as he must have done to cause these injuries, with an axe, including forceful blows to her head, he must have intended to kill her and that was what he was attempting to do.”
Mr Green said the trial will hear that Sumner had been acting ‘oddly’ in the days before the incident, ‘going on about aliens and swinging an axe about’ in the maisonette he shared with his girlfriend Kayleigh Barton.”
He said: “You are likely to hear from her that the defendant has a history of using cannabis and alcohol and that in the few days before the attack on PC Bates, the defendant had been saying things like ‘They’re coming for me’ and he had claimed to see demons in the corner of his computer screen looking at him.”
He said Sumner’s ‘strange and volatile behaviour’ continued until the day of the incident on April 13, with Sumner starting to ‘smash up’ the living room using his axe. The police were called by a neighbour in a flat below at about 7.30pm – resulting in PC Bates and her colleague PC Mark Garrett being sent to the scene. Mr Green said Sumner, wearing only a pair of shorts, ‘flew out’ of his property and pinned PC Garrett up against a wall. This led PC Bates to attempt to use incapacitating spray on Sumner. He said: “Whilst it had little effect upon the defendant, unhappily it had an incapacitating effect upon PC Garrett.” The defendant then ran back into his flat, returning with the axe.
Mr Green said: “PC Bates then ran, with PC Garrett in front of her as the defendant said words to the effect of ‘Come on, I’m going to kill you’. “She jumped to the bottom of the communal steps and at that point knew she had broken her leg in her attempt to escape.” Mr Green said witnesses described seeing Sumner repeatedly hitting PC Bates with an axe. He said Sumner’s girlfriend had run down to the flats beneath her in the moments before and told a neighbour named Simon Ellis that ‘her boyfriend was in the process of killing two police officers’. Mr Ellis allowed Ms Barton in his home and then saw PC Bates ‘staggering’ from the same staircase that Ms Barton had come down and fall forward towards the balcony railings. Mr Green said Mr Ellis then saw Sumner follow her, lean over her and begin to hit her with a weapon in the thigh and head. He said: “He was swinging the weapon repeatedly, despite PC Bates putting her hands up in an attempt to protect herself. “The defendant taunted her as he set about her, asking if she was going to kill him and ‘smash my head in’. “He swing relentlessly, albeit pausing to get the best angles from which to deliver his targeted assault.”
When police officers arrived moments later, Mr Green said Sumner bit one officer in the arm and managed to grab a police baton off another as he was being restrained. CCTV was shown to court of one officer appearing to kick Sumner in the back, prompting gasps from members of his family watching in the public gallery. Moments later, Sumner was Tasered and fell to the ground before being handcuffed.
The case resumes on Monday.
Read more at: http://www.thestar.co.uk/
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