2014: FORMER LYE SOLDIER JAILED AFTER VICIOUS ATTACK ON BROTHER
A FORMER Lye soldier who viciously attacked his brother with a hammer following a row over inheritance has been jailed for 12 years.Mark Baker, aged 47, left his 50-year-old brother, Christopher, with a fractured skull, broken finger and ribs, and a punctured lung because he was inheriting more than him in their grandmother's will.
"This a sad case in any view," Judge John Wait told Baker at Wolverhampton Crown Court, "It arises because of the festering resentment on your part over the distribution of the estate.
This was a premeditated attack after you armed yourself with a weapon.
You carried out a sustained attack on the vulnerable parts of his body." The judge said Christopher Baker had always made it clear it was his brother who attacked him at his home in Northfield Road, Netherton, but he refused to make a complaint until he was assaulted again.
On that occasion, the court was told Baker struck his brother in the face with a brick, damaging his nose and eye before vandalising his parked car.
"He realised you were not going to leave him alone and it was then he made a statement to the police," the judge told Baker of High Street, Lye.
"Such a grievance can never justify the first attack you carried out on your brother," concluded the judge as he ruled only a substantial jail term was appropriate.
Baker had denied inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent on his brother and also assaulting him causing actual bodily harm but he was convicted by a jury after they retired to consider the evidence at the end of his trial.
"There was a clear issue as to the distribution of the grandmother's estate," said Simon Hanns, defending Baker, who admitted a charge of criminal damage.
"Fortuitously the brother has made a full recovery from his injuries." The jury had been told that Baker was aggrieved his brother was inheriting the bulk of the estate and he hit him a number of times with the hammer after going to his Netherton home.
The second assault took place on an industrial estate in the area, when Baker made threats to his brother before hitting him with the brick, smashing the back window in his car and kicking out at the door panels.
