A RAGING thug battered her neighbour with a crutch after being confronted for destroying her wisteria plant.
Atidel Boutara Cook branded Pei Wong a “f***ing b***h” after she was caught cutting down the plant by the victim’s husband.
The 50-year-old also hit her in the forehead and twice in the chest with her crutch during the violent attack in Tottenham, North London.
Boutara Cook has now been convicted of criminal damage and assault following a trial.
Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court was told Pei and her husband Louis Scott live upstairs, while Boutara Cook lives on the ground floor.
The couple, who own the freehold of the Victoria house, said they did not usually interact with Boutara Cook despite having been neighbours for 20 years.
But on December 17 last year, Louis saw the defendant destroying a wisteria plant in the front garden when he returned home from work.
He and Pei went to confront Boutara Cook together and filmed the encounter on a mobile phone.
Giving evidence, Louis said: “We went to the porch of the front door of the property and we asked our neighbour to… I forget exactly what we said but in calm, polite terms, ‘Please could you stop what you were doing’, and said that we weren’t happy with what she was doing.
“We didn’t approach her.”
The court heard Boutara Cook then “lost control of herself” when she realised the couple were filming and began “screaming abuse and waving her arms”.
She then beat Pei “a number of times” with her crutch, with the video picking up a “metallic-like sound, thumping on to Ms Wong”.
Pei told the court the defendant had knocked the phone out of her hand, while Boutara Cook said the victim “threw” it.
She added: “I would say that I was shaking.
“I will let you know that I couldn’t believe that she repeatedly continued to hit me even though I didn’t say a single word to her.”
Asked by Bilal Miah, defending, if Boutara Cook had previously asked the couple to maintain the wisteria as it was causing damp in her property, Pei continued: “The defendant never asked us, never in writing.”
She added: “No, the defendant never spoke to me, never ever I talk to the defendant.
“The defendant never talks to us never ever, it’s always go to the legal, the lawyers, we never received any letters about the wisteria plants or any other plants causing her problems.”
Boutara Cook told the court she accepted she cut the wisteria but said the plant had been “dead” and was affecting the air quality inside her flat.
She had to be told twice by the judge not to interrupt while Pei and her husband gave evidence.
Boutara Cook will be sentenced at the same court on May 6.
