A Limavady man who consumed three bottles of wine before smashing a glass over his wife’s head has been sentenced to four months in prison.

Mark Anderson of Whitehill Park admitted a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm when he came before Limavady Magistrates Court (above) this morning.

A prosecutor told the court that a member of the public contacted police on February 1 and stated that a woman, who they named to the call handler, had been assaulted by her husband.

The reporting person stated that they didn’t know exactly where the woman and her husband lived.

When police attended the couple’s property, they discovered that the injured party was sitting in a car outside.

Officers noticed that the woman had an injury to the top of her head which was bleeding ‘profusely over her face and hair’.

The injured party told police that her husband, the defendant, had struck her on the head twice with a glass inflicting what the court heard was a ‘deep wound’.

When 41 year-old Anderson was arrested, he stated that the incident was his fault, adding that what he did was wrong.

Anderson’s solicitor Peter Jack said his client consumed three bottles of wine on the night in question.

He stated that the couple have been moving towards a reconciliation before adding that Anderson would, for the rest of his life, have to live with the fact that he has been ‘found guilty of a very serious assault on his wife’.

During sentencing, District Judge Liam McNally said to Anderson: “The picture I can’t get out of my mind is one of you in the early hours of the morning battering your wife on the head with a glass, causing her head to cut, blood gushing from it, and her having to go to hospital to get staples.”

Handing down the four month custodial sentence, Judge McNally said the court would be ‘failing in its duty’ if it wasn’t seen to be imposing a custodial sentence on ‘people who act like that toward their wives’.

In addition to the prison sentence, Anderson was ordered to pay an offender levy of £25.

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