A man is facing jail after he tore the roof off his neighbours home during a bitter seven-year war.
Mark Coates, 57, smashed a hole through the roof of his semi-detached home before climbing out.
After this he began tearing off the tiles and chimney pots of the £400,000 home before throwing them to the ground.
When he had largely destroyed his own roof he moved over to his neighbours’ home and began tearing the roof tiles form their home.
Neighbour Janice Tuner, 66, told a court she was ‘scared and upset’ after a tile flew past her face and immediately called police.
A police stand-off lasting at least two hours ensued before Coates was arrested and taken into custody.
A jury was told how Coates had caused more than £200,000 worth of damage to the homes in Robertsbridge, near Hastings.
Video of the incident, captured by police, showed Coates smashing dozens of tiles on the semi-detached properties and refusing to come down when requested by officers.
Coates was yesterday found guilty of two counts of criminal damage on the properties.
However, he was cleared of two counts of causing fear of violence or harassment after a trial at Lewes Crown Court.
The tile-throwing incident at the homes in Robertsbridge, near Hastings happened on June 10 this year.
It was the culmination of a long-running and bitter dispute between the neighbours which began when a fence panel fell down.
The boundary dispute erupted when a new fence separating their two gardens was erected.
Lewes Crown Court heard that, after years of litigation, the case had eventually gone to the High Court where a judge had ruled against Coates.
As a result his property was going to be sold to reimburse Miss Turner and David Greenwood’s legal fees as well as to pay for the damage caused to their property and for compensation for the harassment they had suffered.
But just three days before he was due to hand over the house keys, he decided to cause massive damage to the three-bedroom property, the jury heard.
The video, captured from a police body-worn camera, shows police officers trying to reason with Coates and coax him down from the roof.
But Coates told officers: ‘I’ve had this house stolen off me by a judge and corrupt police. I’ll cause as much damage as I can to devalue the house.’
Although not captured on video, Coates then clambered across the roof and began smashing tiles from neighbours’ adjoining home, throwing them down into their garden.
Miss Turner said: ‘There were a variety of loud noises coming from inside his house, banging and clattering.
‘I went up the garden and Mr Coates was inside and he was smashing a hole from the inside of his attic space and he was cutting the batons and knocking the tiles off the roof.
‘He was picking some of them up and throwing them into the garden and towards me. I was standing by my greenhouse I felt debris from the roof go past my face.’
She said when the hole was big enough to climb through Coates clambered out onto the roof.
Miss Turner said: ‘He continued to remove everything from that roof and then breached the party wall area and completely removed the best part of the roof at the rear of my property.
‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was extremely distressed and I was very scared and I was crying. I felt very, very frightened.
‘He was systematically and vindictively destroying the property. He cut a hole through the joists. He took the staircase out of his house. His aim was to destroy and diminish its value. It was calculating and spiteful.’
Mr Greenwood told the jury: ‘Tiles were being thrown everywhere, chimney pots were being smashed off. I was quite shocked. I’ve never seen someone destroying a house that way before. The whole situation was completely out of hand. It was just total, total destruction.’
In the video, shown to the court, Coates told officers his aim was to cause as much damage as possible.
He said he wanted charges to be so serious he would get a trial by jury where he would be able to expose officials who had used ‘corruption and bias’ to strip him of his home.
Coates is due to be sentenced in January.
