A construction firm boss was facing jail today following a “ferocious” attack on his next door neighbour in a respectable Wolverhampton suburb.
Noureddine ‘Dino’ Elbakkali, 41, repeatedly head-butted, punched, bit and spat at former West Midlands Fire Station Officer Michael Lay.
Elbakkali, the managing director of a building firm employing 70 people, was banned by a judge from returning home to Uplands Drive in Finchfield until sentence is passed next week and warned he could be locked up for six months.
Divorced Elbakkali launched the unprovoked eight-minute assault after returning home from work to find his estranged teenage son chatting to the neighbour he had not spoken to for more than two years following a dispute, Wolverhampton Magistrates Court heard yesterday.
Mr Lay, 52, now a part-time Wolverhampton College lecturer after competing a 34-year unblemished career in the fire service, said: “He leapt out of his car leaving the engine running and door open and strode up to me.
“He was very aggressive and spat straight in my face. Then he grabbed hold of my lapel and headbutted me in the face.
“He knocked me to the ground and headbutted me twice more. I tried to push his head away and he bit my left index finger and punched me quite hard in the face several times.
“I heard somebody shouting and realised that my wife Janet had just pulled up in her car. I shouted to her to call the police.
“Dino pulled his tie off and said to me: ‘You are dealing with the wrong person here.’ I have never had a fight before in my life but I started to punch him in the face.”
The fight on the shared gravel drive between their homes finally broken up after police were called. Mr Lay was taken to hospital for treatment to a suspected broken nose, cuts, bruises and the bite to his finger.
He was off work for a week.
The pair had happily lived next door to each other for over seven years before they stopped speaking when the home of Elbakkali was burgled and he pointed the finger of suspicion at a friend of his neighbour’s son, the court heard. Elbakkali had invited his teenage son round to see him on the evening of the attack on January 15.
The youngster was sitting on the doorstep waiting when father-of-two Mr Lay, who used to be based at Fallings Park fire station, returned home next door and the pair started chatting.
Elbakkali, who received a police caution three years ago for assaulting one of his workers but had no previous convictions, said: “I was not very happy to find the son I had not seen for some time talking to a neighbour I did not speak to.” Elbakkali, boss of Wolverhampton-based Dino Buildings Ltd, denied assault but was found guilty after District Judge Martin Brown dismissed his claim of self defence as “implausible and incredible.”
Mr Brown adjourned the case for reports and ordered Elbakkal to move out of his house and live with friends in Whitmore Reans until sentencing next Wednesday.
He warned him: “This was a most ferocious attack and I am considering a possible punishment of between four and six months custody.”
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