A serial domestic abuser has been jailed for a terrifying attack in which he repeatedly battered his girlfriend’s head off of a concrete step.
Michael Hannah, 40, slammed the woman’s head off of the steps at his Aberdeen flat stairwell then paced up and down shouting her name as she ran off to call for help.
Concerned neighbours in Torry’s Farquhar Road were awoken to the sounds of the woman’s crying on the evening of November 7 this year, Aberdeen Sheriff Court was told.
Fiscal depute Alan Townsend said: “At around 11.10pm they both entered the block containing the accused’s home address.
“He shouts and swears at her and calls her words such a ‘slag’.
“She is walking up the stairs when he grabs her by the hair and slams her onto the ground before slamming her head at least twice off the concrete steps.
“Neighbours were awoken by the sound of her crying and in distress. They heard the accused shouting her name angrily as he paced up and down the road.
“The complainer had made her way to a nearby phone box to call police.”
Officers found her “distressed and dishevelled” with swelling to the left side of her head.
She was taken to ARI where medics noted swelling to her head and bruising to her ribs.
Hannah, who was previously convicted of domestically assaulting the same woman last year, was arrested the following morning and denied that any assault took place.
In court, he admitted one charge of domestic assault and a bail breach.
He also admitted a further charge of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner towards the same woman in a different incident a few weeks before the assault.
On October 14 this year he refused to let the woman out of his Vauxhall Astra despite her expressing fear of being assaulted and asking to be released.
The court heard how on that occasion the woman phoned her family “crying out of fear and speaking incoherently” while Hannah was overheard in the background.
He did, however, eventually drive her to a family member’s home.
‘A very unpleasant relationship’
Hannah’s defence agent John Hardy said the woman “wants to resume the relationship” but his client does not.
“She also indicates that the complaints she made were to an extent exaggerated by her,” the solicitor said. “It had become a very unpleasant relationship for the two of them.”
Hannah, who has been remanded at HMP Grampian in Peterhead since November 9, has used his time behind bars to stabilise his mental health, the court was told.
Sheriff Lesley Johnston told Hannah there was “no real alternative to a custodial sentence available” and said it was “only good luck” the woman was not more seriously, or fatally, injured.
She jailed Hannah, of Farquhar Road, Aberdeen, for 13 months with that sentence backdated to last month. She also imposed a non-harassment order, preventing him from contacting his victim for three years.
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