A Dunedin man who hacked off his partner’s hair with a pair of scissors, then broke her nose, has been jailed for 16 months.
Warren John Cowley (53) pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening to kill and two of assaulting a female before he appeared in the Dunedin District Court last week.
He was at home with the victim on March 16 when he grabbed scissors and took to the victim’s locks.
"You look better with short hair," Cowley told her.
The woman described the attack as "devastating" and in a statement to the court spoke of her need to visit a hairdresser to have it tidied up.
The victim felt "mutilated" by the hack job but Cowley’s offending was far from finished.
He punched her in the nose, causing it to bleed all over the table and floor.
While the victim cleaned herself up, Cowley packed a bag and left the home.
When he returned shortly afterwards, police were on their way but the man was in no mood to give himself up.
Officers asked him to come to the door but instead he locked himself inside and shut the curtains. Cowley was repeatedly told he was under arrest and asked to let police in.
"Come in if you want to get shot," he told them several times.
Defence counsel Campbell Savage called his client’s threats "drunken blatherings" but Judge Kevin Phillips rejected that characterisation.
Eventually police made their way into the property and found Cowley in a bedroom.
The victim sustained a broken nose from the punch and said she still had trouble breathing.
She was due to have surgery to repair it, the court heard.
Judge Phillips said the defendant had a history of violence.
On April 7 last year, Cowley was living in a Melville St boarding house and objected to another resident entering his room. A drunken Cowley threw punches at the victim before grabbing a claw hammer.
But the man wrestled it off him and beat him around the head.
Cowley was jailed for a year over the fracas, while the other man received a term of home detention.
