A NEIGHBOUR battered an elderly husband in front of his wife after being branded a ”weirdo” during a petty parking dispute.
Russell Jones, 62, targeted Robert Burns, also in his 60s, outside a hairdressing salon.
He launched a frenzied attack, pummelling Mr Burns’ head as the victim’s wife Wendy screamed: ”He is a sick man – you’ll kill him!”
The savage attacker had to be pulled away by a passerby but left his victim with cuts to both his elbows and bruising all over his face.
Sullen Jones launched the barbaric assault following a furious argument eight months earlier with Mrs Burns outside their terraced properties.
It came after the victim left bags of rubbish and tins of paint in a space behind his car – blocking neighbours from parking their own vehicles.
Read more on parking rows
But the dad-of-one of Garston, Liverpool, claimed Mrs Burns called him a ”weirdo” and told him: ”I know about you and your daughter” during the row.
She claimed he had made sick remarks about her son.
At Sefton magistrates court, Jones was convicted of common assault on Mr Burns and was acquitted of assaulting the victim during the September 9 horror last year.
The court heard the couple were on their way to the post office early afternoon and saw Jones who had been taking his 92-year-old mum to the hairdressers banging his hand on his car.
He was aggressively shouting “glass houses, glass houses” as he damaged his own Nissan Note, Mr Burns said he had no idea why he was doing it.
Jones later claimed this was reference to “tittle tattle” between himself and Mrs Burns.
The couple ignored the scene but as they walked further up the road, Jones pulled up, ran over and started “ranting and raving” at them.
Mr Burns recalled: “He was standing right in front of Wendy. I said ‘Back off, what’s the matter?’
“He turned to me and said, ‘Why, what are you going to do about it? He was right in my face.”
The victim said crazed Jones then grabbed hold of Mrs Burns’ arm and “put his hand on her chest”, Burns moved to get him off his missus but then “the punches started flying”.
Mr Burns was knocked to the floor where the attack continued as Jones “was raining punches down on me” before a bystander dragged the attacker off.
When asked whether his wife, in her 60s, had called Jones a ‘weirdo’ during an earlier argument Mr Burns replied, “I do not know, but I will agree with that”.
Mrs Burns told the trial how in January 2021 she had a recalled having a confrontation with Jones when he was arguing with another female neighbour about a parking issue.
During the row Jones was alleged to have made a sick comment about Mrs Burns’ son and she replied: “What has that to do with this.”
Mrs Burns said, “I told him to be quiet and I remember my neighbour saying ‘That is pure evil what you said.
“I remember saying, ’You would not be standing here saying that if my family was here. You are a bully.”
You do not scare me, what are you going to do?
Russell Jones
Recalling the assault, Mrs Burns said when Mr Jones put his hand on her chest she “was hysterical” and despite being asked “three times” by Mr Burns to back off, Jones did not.
Mrs Burns said it was then that Jones said: “You do not scare me, what are you going to do?’”
The fight erupted and Mrs Burns screamed for “anybody to help” as she tried to drag Jones off husband – a man working on a house nearby charged over and got the attacker off.
Eye witness Jennifer Dowden recalled seeing “all hell” breaking loose and seeing Mr Burns unable to fight back.
Jones denied punching Mr Burns, before adding: “I did not take being called a weirdo seriously, but I do take exception to ‘I know about you and your daughter’. I was deeply offended by that.
Read More on The Sun
“On the day of the incident I heard him say something like ‘nutter’ under his breath. “So, I thought I would go after her to ask what she meant by ‘I know about you and your daughter.’”
Jones will be sentenced next month at Liverpool magistrates court.
