A woman who destroyed her neighbour’s wisteria before hitting her repeatedly with a crutch breached her restraining order before she had even left court.
Atidel Boutara Cook was convicted of criminal damage on Wednesday after damaging a plant belonging to Pei Wong in Tottenham, north London, on December 17 last year.
Highbury Magistrates’ Court heard the defendant called Ms Wong a ‘f******* b****’ and struck her once on the forehead and twice on the chest when she was confronted over the damage.
Ms Wong and her husband Louis Scott own the freehold of the Victorian house in Stanhope Gardens and have lived above Boutara Cook for two decades, it was heard.
But District Judge Denis Brennan told Boutara Cook that she has made the lives of Ms Wong, her husband – and potentially their children – a ‘misery’.
She has continued to ‘interfere’ with the property since the incident, including with ‘ongoing banging at night’ which has affected her neighbour’s sleep.
In her victim impact statement, Ms Wong said she feels trapped in her home, intimidated, anxious and emotionally exhausted, and has had to install CCTV.
Boutara Cook was ordered to pay the freehold owners £500 and issued a five-year restraining order banning her from contacting them.
But the London resident, who was snapped blowing photographers a kiss outside court, had breached that order within minutes of it being imposed.
When asked by Judge Brennan whether she understood her penalty, she replied ‘absolutely, yep’ before peering above the public gallery and making a kiss towards the couple, asking: ‘Happy?’
Atidel Boutara Cook blew a kiss to photographers outside Highbury Magistrates’ Court after being convicted of criminal damage
The defendant broke a restraining order handed down to her by a judge before she had even left the court
Then, as she walked towards the courtroom door, she called out to them: ‘I will send it to you in one go, so you can go on holiday.’
The judge interjected: ‘I warn you Ms Boutara Cook that that is immediately a breach of the restraining order.’
He added it will be decided later if police get involved.
Mr Scott spotted Boutara Cook cutting down the wisteria and pulling out other plants as he returned home from work one December evening.
She told him ‘f*** you, nasty people’ when he approached, said prosecutor Mr Groves, who would not give his first name to reporters.
The architect couple rarely interacted with Boutara Cook but asked her to stop, the court heard previously.
Ms Wong filmed the confrontation and it showed the defendant standing outside the front door holding large garden shears.
Her husband could be heard saying: ‘This is really horrible, you doing this.’
The phone was dropped and screaming and shouting can be heard in the background, including repeated swearing.
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Mr Scott told the trial: ‘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.’
Boutara Cook was also given a 12-month community order with 15 rehabilitation activity requirement days.
The restraining order makes it illegal for her to contact the couple directly or indirectly, including through their children.
An exemption is in place if the couple contact her about building issues or she speaks to them through a solicitor.
Judge Brennan said: ‘Living in accommodation, whether it’s in London or anywhere, should be something that gives people safety, gives them a sense of wellbeing and a sense of which they can lead a happy and ordered life.
‘Your behaviour prior to and on December 17 – and if I understand matters correctly, since December 17 – has made the lives of Mr Scott and Ms Wong, and I infer, their children, a life of misery.
‘That is not fair. That is not appropriate.’
