A thug who deliberately hit a love rival with a car after headbutting and kicking his pregnant ex-wife in the stomach has been jailed.
Mark Findlay, of Countess Street, Accrington, mounted the pavement using an old Vauxhall Corsa and hit pedestrian Kamran Ali from behind causing him to roll onto the bonnet and windscreen, a court heard.
Prosecutors said Mr Ali was in a relationship with Findley’s ex wife and that the self-employed mechanic Findley lured him to the street after stealing her mobile phone and contacting him through WhatsApp.
Earlier the same day father-of-three Findlay, 28, headbutted and kicked his ex-wife in the stomach at her home causing some of her teeth to be knocked out, the court heard.
Police later found the Corsa on fire after Findlay deliberately torched the vehicle to erase any forensic evidence, a judge was told.
Findlay was found guilty after a trial at Preston Crown Court of attempted GBH with intent, dangerous driving, ABH, arson, perverting the course of justice and theft. He was jailed for a total of seven years and three months and disqualified from driving for six years and six months.
Lisa Worsley, prosecuting, told the court how the incidents happened on June 16 last year after Findlay went round to his ex-wife’s house in Blackburn.
Findlay demanded her mobile phone before ‘slapping her to the face’ which caused her to bang her head on a cupboard and fall to the floor.
The defendant then kicked the pregnant victim in the stomach and when she tried to escape ‘threw her onto the settee’ and banged her head into a door frame.
Findlay then headbutted the victim before fleeing the house.
The court heard how the victim went to her aunt’s house and they then saw Findlay ‘driving repeatedly at speed past the address’ in an old Corsa which belonged to a mutual friend.
Miss Worsley said Findlay had stolen his ex-wife’s mobile phone and began contacting Mr Ali and told him to go to the bottom of a street in Blackburn.
The court heard how when Mr Ali arrived he ‘heard the sound of car wheels spinning’ before being ‘thrown into the air’.
The collision was witnessed by a nearby worker and dashcam footage on another car showed the Corsa fleeing the area with a smashed windscreen.
Police found the car one hour later on fire.
Judge Ian Leeming QC said he was ‘deeply troubled by the case’.
He told the court that Findlay had used the ‘car as a weapon’ involving ‘premeditation and planning’.
Judge Leeming said it was a ‘woeful chapter of incidents’ but decided not to class the defendant as a ‘dangerous offender’.
A victim impact statement read to the court from Findlay’s ex-wife told how she was ‘genuinely scared and concerned for her life’ and that it came after a ‘long line of assaults against her’.
The court heard that she was suffering from nightmares .
Mr Ali was discharged from hospital several hours after the collision with grazes and scarring’.
Defence barrister Peter Killen said the defendant could be given no sentencing credit because he was found guilty after a trial and that he posed a ‘medium risk of reoffending’.
He told the court that Findlay ‘continues to receive romantic correspondents’ from his ex-wife following the trial and that was he using his time on remand to get qualifications.
