Boyfriend shoots partner in head with air gun after cigarettes and sandwiches row
A man shot his boyfriend in the head with an air gun after a row over cigarettes and sandwhiches.
Ken Richardson held the weapon up to his partner's head and shot him - after he had ignored Richardson's offer to make him a sandwich, three times. The couple had rowed minutes earlier, after he caught Richardson taking his cigarettes.
The victim was rushed to James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough on March 27, but surgeons decided it was safer to leave the pellet lodged in his skull.
Richardson, 44, appeared at Teesside Crown Court, via video link from Durham prison, on Thursday morning. He was originally facing an attempted murder charge, but the court accepted his guilty pleas to causing grievous bodily harm with intent and to the possession of a firearm with intent.
The court heard that the couple have been in an on-off relationship for many years, and that Richardson was struggling with poor mental health and drug addiction. The victim let Richardson move in to help him - but Richardson ended up becoming his carer after the victim developed a bad back.
Richardson had asked his partner for some cigarettes and his partner had given him some on the evening of March 26 - but he said that when he woke up the next morning, he caught Richardson taking more. The victim said that he picked up the cigarette packet and "threw it behind him." He later ignored Richardson's offer of a sandwich.
In a statement read out to the court, the victim said: "The next thing I heard a loud sound to my head. I turned and looked and I saw the barrel of my air rifle inches from my face." He rang the police at 6.45am; and Richardson was found waiting outside "with his bags packed" when officers arrived at the Hartlepool home.
In a letter, the victim asked the judge to hand Richardson a lenient sentence. "I believe it was his mental health that caused him to do what he did."
A psychiatrist's report found that Richardson may have been suffering from psychosis at the time. Richardson himself said he was "hearing voices because of all of the drugs" he had taken.
Judge Timothy Stead told Richardson that his victim "has done something which is unusual. He feels a degree of blame for the situation himself and there were clearly domestic strains at the time.
"You have a long history of drug abuse and it may well be that your thinking was disturbed to some extent. Discharging this weapon at someone's temple at close range - you are both fortunate that no further harm was caused."
Speaking to the victim, who sat in the public gallery, the judge said that the law does not permit him to suspend the sentence. Richardson, of Telford Close in Hartlepool, was jailed for 32-months.
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