A VAN driver waged a five-year war against his next-door neighbours over a parking spot.

Roy Henshall subjected Mark Jones and his wife Nulla to a campaign of hate over how close their vehicles were outside their adjoining terraced homes in St Helens, Merseyside, a court heard.

Pest controller Henshall, 55, was said to have falsely accused Mr Jones of being a paedophile and played cruel pranks on him after he complained he parked his taxi "bumper-to-bumper" behind his Ford Transit.

During the row, which started only a week after the Joneses moved in, it was claimed Henshall threw condemned meat into their garden for their Jack Russell terrier to eat.

He also allegedly pushed piles of junk mail through their letterbox, hung black ladies underwear on their washing line and painted a silver cross on their back gate after the couple contracted Covid.

He was eventually charged by police after the couple installed a Ring security camera which was said to have captured Henshall ''growling'' outside their front door.

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In several clips, he says: "'Piece of f**ing s**t", "Jones you are going to get taught a lesson", and "Never f***ing learns, never f***ing learns".

Other chilling warnings caught on the device included: "I am going to get you Jones"and "We will get you, you paed", and he also stuck two fingers up to the house across the street and then to the Joneses.

At Sefton magistrates court, Henshall was convicted of two harassment charges after 33 videos recorded by the device were played to JPs.

The incidents began in 2017 after Mr and Mrs Jones moved in next door to Henshall who then began complaining the taxi cab was being parked just a ''credit card'' width from his van, making it impossible for him to open his rear doors.

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Mrs Jones told police: ''We've always tried to park considerately, but this man started parking bumper to bumper with our car.

"Then the abuse – physical, verbal and mental – just started from there."

Her husband added: "From the very first week we moved in, the intimidation started.

"He made horrific statements about myself and my wife.

"He threatened that he would make me lose my taxi badge, that he would get it revoked by contacting the council.

"He also told me that I was a paedophile and to stop looking at little children across the road."

Henshall spat at their door, chucked rubbish into their yard and even lobbed bags of human faeces, Mr Jones claimed.

'VERY DISTRESSED'

The couple reported him to the police and were advised to install a Ring doorbell to gather some "solid evidence", which they eventually did.

''We were very distressed, very upset," Mr Jones, who has been treated for cancer, said in a statement.

"I have done absolutely nothing ever to instigate this harassment."

He said he now takes a different route to work every day, and his wife has changed where she walks the dog for fear of being followed.

But Henshall, who has lived at his address for 26 years, claimed he was "ganged up on" by the couple and other residents in the street.

"The reason relations broke down was because he was parking a credit card away from my back bumper," he said.

"I need to open the back doors to my van so I asked Mr Jones politely if he could give me some space and he said: 'Yes. no problem, sorry about that', and reversed a bit.

"But the very next day he was back doing the very same thing.

"I think it's bizarre that it has come to this over parking."

Henshall will be sentenced at a later date.

JP Gareth Dykes told him: "From all the evidence we have heard, it is clear you have pursued a course of conduct over a sustained period of time which you knew or ought to have known amounted to the harassment of Mr and Mrs Jones."

Harassment carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in custody, or 14 if racially or religiously motivated.

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