A Falklands veteran who tried to gouge a woman’s e
A Falklands veteran who tried to gouge a woman’s eyes in her home after claiming he was a member of the local neighbourhood watch was caged for six years at the Old Bailey today.
Ex-soldier Lawrence George Spence, 36, attacked the middle-aged lady with a mirror in a bizarre ‘test’ also believed he was ‘the seventh Angel of God.
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Spence launched the prolonged assault after chatting away to 52 year-old neighbour Margaret Roulston over a few glasses of whisky.
When the conversation turned to his horrific experiences clearing explosives after the Falklands war, Spence smashed the whisky bottle over her head.
He snarled: ‘I am the seventh angel of God and I have come to kill you.
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Prosecutor Miss Parmjit-Kaur Cheema said: ‘He called her a transvestite, kicked and punched her all over her body, smashed a lamp over her head and broke a mirror across her face.
‘With the pieces he dug into various parts of her body and tried to gouge her eyes with the steel frame of the mirror.
‘She thought she was going to die and had accepted her fate.
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Crazed Spence then cut a gash in her forearm as a way to ‘test her’, the court heard.
His attack stopped when he proclaimed Miss Roulston had passed the test.
As he calmed down she escaped and ran into the street covered in blood.
It took 30 minutes for nurses to catalogue all her injuries including a 3 centimetre gash in her forehead.
Though not life-threatening, they covered the entire length of her body.
Detectives went to her home in Brixton, southwest London, later in the evening and arrested Spence slumped drunkenly in the armchair.
Blood was spread around Miss Roulston’s home.
Questioned by detectives, Spence said he could not remember anything after the pleasant conversation with his victim and said he had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.
He had been deeply affected by witnessing the horrific deaths of fellow soldiers when an unexploded bomb went off, the court was told.
Psychiatrists had disagreed over whether Spence was mentally ill or not.
But today (mon) the court heard he had no such illness.
Spence has no previous convictions but he was cautioned in April 1998 for possessing of an imitation firearm ‘with intent to cause fear of violence.
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Miss Cheema had told how Spence conned his way into Miss Roulston’s home by pretending to be a former police sergeant and a member of the local neighbourhood watch group.
She continued: ‘In the victim’s home, his demeanour abruptly changed when he began telling her he had been in the marines in active service in the Falklands.
‘Ms Roulston became alarmed when he said ‘I can’t get done because the police are on my side,’ and she tried to get him to leave.
She got up from her chair and he attacked her.
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Spence, of Vassell Road, Brixton, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent – an offence which carries the maximum term of life imprisonment – on October 29 last year.
The Common Serjeant of London, Judge Neil Denison, QC, said:
‘You must realise this was an appalling attack.
It caused serious physical injury and one cannot possible calculate the mental distress it caused.
‘It could be that at last you realise what terrible effect alcohol can have on you.
‘If you do not, this is going to happen again.
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Defence counsel Christopher Blake said Spence had been off drink for three months while he attended a drying out programme in Devon.
But days before the attack he relapsed into booze as soon as he returned London.
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