A ROADS boss who headbutted his neighbour and threw her husband over a gate after trying to gouge his eyes has been fined and landed with a £928 bill.

Harry Ferris, 65, exploded twice with his next-door neighbours the Hellawells within four months, after a bitter dispute over boundaries.

CCTV footage of his first attack showed 18-and-a-half stone Ferris, who is around six foot tall, berating Hilda Hellawell after she flung a hosepipe over a connecting gate, while gardening.

At the Burnley Magistrates’ Court hearing in July, she told how he hurled obscenities at her, including calling her a derogatory name, before he thrust his head forward into her face, causing her to step back.

Mrs Hellawell said she was ‘shocked and surprised’ and later reported the matter, at their adjoining homes in Bull Hall, off Todmorden Road, Bacup, to police.

Magistrates heard that the second incident occurred on Christmas Eve last year when Ferris arrived home from shopping with his wife, while Phillip Hella-well was repairing a gate between the two properties.

During an audio recording made by Mr Hellawell at the time, played to the court, Ferris was heard repeatedly swearing at his neighbour before warning him he was ‘dead’.

Ferris denied the two offences of assault in relation to the alleged attack on Mrs Hellawell, on August 26, and her husband on December 24 last year.

But after a two-day hearing magistrates found Ferris, who has no previous convictions, guilty of two assault offences.

Ferris was sentenced at Burnley Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.

He was fined £480, was ordered to pay £200 compensation to the Hellawells, £48 victim surcharge and £200 to the Crown Prosecution Service.