AN ANGRY Warwick man callously poured a kettle of boiling water over his terrified girlfriend after pulling her back from a window where she had desperately been trying to get help.
And Marcus Tatana was jailed for five years after a judge described the kettle as ‘a fearsome weapon’ which had left his victim with permanent scarring.
The 20 year-old, of Wallwin Court, Friars Street, had denied inflicting grievous bodily harm on his 21-year-old victim with intent to cause her serious injury.
But the jury at Warwick Crown Court took less than two hours to reject his claim that the terrible injury had been caused by him accidentally spilling a cup of tea.
Prosecutor Richard Witcombe said on September 12 last year four schoolgirls were walking home along Friars Street when they saw a woman at the window of Tatana’s ground floor flat.
The woman, who was shaking and crying, cried out to the 12-year-old girls that she needed help and to call the police as Tatana pushed her, causing her to fall against the window, and then pulled her back into the room.
As he then shut the window and closed the blinds, the concerned schoolgirls called the police.
Before they arrived Tatana left the flat, and when the woman then came out, one of the girls noticed blood on her feet.
When the police then arrived, they took her straight to Warwick Hospital.
She had a burn and blistering to the back of her leg which had been caused by scalding liquid which has left her with permanent scaring.
Mr Witcombe said at the time the victim had been in a relationship with Tatana for about three months, and she had moved into his flat, but he had then become abusive towards her.
On that day she had been sleeping in rather late when he had woken her during the afternoon and began shouting at her.
She became scared, and and after opening the window she burst into tears because she couldn’t open it wide enough the get out, and it was then that she had spoken to the schoolgirls.
“Tatana returned to the room, and he had with him a kettle from the kitchen. He pulled her backwards towards the bed and poured water that was boiling over her.”
“She then went as if to pack her things, and in the moment that followed that, he threw a red candle at her, and burning wax landed in her hair.”
Tatana made no comment when he was interviewed, but during the trial he claimed he and Rose had argued and that she had ‘dangled herself out of the window.’
Tatana’s barrister Mark Gatley submitted there was no evidence he had deliberately boiled the kettle intending to cause the injury, adding it had been ‘an isolated incident.’
Jailing Tatana, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told him: “I find you lost your temper, as you were wont to do. You went from the room and took up a kettle you knew contained scalding water, and you carried that as someone else would carry a weapon.
“You carried it towards that young woman as she sought assistance from those young girls. You pulled her back from the window, and you closed the curtains and you hurled the kettle full of water over her.
“That was a callous, cruel and serious act. You used a weapon, and a fearsome weapon at that.”