A long-running family feud over a father’s will erupted in violence when two brothers attacked their sibling with a baseball bat and iron bar, a court heard.
Stephen Fenwick suffered a “brutal” two-minute assault from brothers Gerald, 50, and Lee, 38, outside his Middlesbrough home while his wife and four-year-old daughter were inside.
Teesside Crown Court heard yesterday that the brothers’ dispute over the £15,000 estate left by their late father “was a sore that festered”.
“Tensions were running pretty high” on September 11 last year when the attack took place, said Peter Sabiston, prosecuting.
“Stephen at the time still lived in close proximity to one of his brothers,” he said.
On arriving home at around 4.30pm that day “and perhaps inadvisably, he walked across and called Gerald a ‘thieving ****, you robbed our mam and I can’t stand you’,” said Mr Sabiston.
Gerald and Lee Fenwick knocked on Stephen’s door at around 10.45pm that night, accompanied by Stephen’s nephew Arron.
“He answered the door to tell them to go away,” said the prosecutor. “Lee ran at him...they shouted ‘We’re going to kill you, we told you to let it go.’”
Stephen Fenwick was punched and struck to the head with the baseball bat. He was taken to hospital and treated for lacerations to the top of his head and grazes to his back.
“The whole incident only lasted about two minutes, but he said during that short period he thought he would be killed,” said Mr Sabiston.
In a victim statement Stephen said he was “not the happy-go-lucky person” he used to be after the assault. “I can’t believe members of my own family would do this to me and it was all over money,” he said.
Andrew Stranex, defending Gerald Fenwick, of Carisbrooke Avenue, Middlesbrough, said it was “an isolated incident in the life of a man who is now 50 years of age” and who has no previous convictions for public disorder or violence.
He told police in interview: “I’m sorry I went around there and I’m sorry I caused those injuries.”
David Lamb for Lee Fenwick, of Ragpath Lane, Stockton, said his client “is not a violent man”.
“There was a long-running family feud over the terms of the will. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it Gerald and Lee considered that Stephen was in the wrong,” Mr Lamb added.
Gerald and Lee Fenwick both admitted unlawful wounding and possession of an offensive weapon and were each jailed for 21 months.
Arron Fenwick, 20, also of Ragpath Lane, who admitted affray, accepting he was there and “encouraged what was going on”, was given a 12- months community order with 12 months supervision and 18 hours’ unpaid work.
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