A drunken housewife hit her husband over the head with a 7ft mirror before he retaliated by attacking her with a stun gun, a court heard yesterday.
The couple were watching television and eating a Chinese takeaway following a night out when Terri Smith, 43, became overwhelmed with emotion over their “volatile” 13-year marriage and launched the astonishing attack.
She accused husband Antony Smith, 42, of responding by blasting her five times in the stomach with the illegal 50 000 volt “black cobra” taser gun.
“I was jabbed three, four, five times in my stomach, it was a sharp stabbing pain,” she told Chippenham magistrates. “I heard the clicky sound of the gun three or four times.”
Mrs Smith claimed her husband, a roof tiler, then dragged her through the front door “very hard by my hair” and shut the door.
“I threw something at the door which smashed the glass and I cut my hand,” she said. Mr Smith allegedly then hurled his wife’s handbag outside and was said to have kicked her in the face as she picked up the contents.
But magistrates cleared Mr Smith of the attack after he admitted possessing an illegal taser, but denied a charge of assault by beating and insisted he had not fired the weapon during the incident because “there wasn’t enough charge in it”.
Presiding magistrate Roger Coleman said: “We find that the defendant did act in self-defence, we believe his version of events. The defendant’s actions were reasonable in the circumstances.”
Mr Smith will be sentenced next month for possession of the illegal stun gun. Although Mrs Smith was arrested, she faced no charges over the incident at the couple’s home in Swindon, Wiltshire, in February.
She said: “I don’t know what came over me, I got up and flipped the coffee table over in front of us. I had so many mixed emotions.
“I was angry about a lot of things, I was sad, I was living under pressure all the time. I grabbed the mirror from behind him and hit him with it.” - Daily Mail