Watch: Swansea man jailed for driving bulldozer into pub

Nation.Cymru staff/Agencies

A man who drove a stolen bulldozer into his local village pub after “seeing red” over the breakdown of his marriage has been jailed for more than three years.

Daniel Morgan, 35, was sentenced at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court to 40 months in prison after admitting aggravated vehicle taking, dangerous driving and criminal damage recklessly endangering life.

The court heard Morgan had been drinking at the The New Inn in December last year when he became enraged after being taunted about the collapse of his marriage.

Judge Celia Hughes was told Morgan, who regularly drank at the pub, had become increasingly paranoid following the separation and wrongly suspected his former partner of having an affair.

After storming out of the pub, Morgan sent threatening messages to landlord Christopher Common, including: “Be careful, you can’t stop a dozer” and “it will be a drive-thru”.

He then stole a vintage Hanomag D600 bulldozer from his father’s nearby farm and drove it towards the pub.

The court heard Morgan deliberately rammed the bulldozer into the front porch of the building twice, causing more than £22,000 worth of damage and terrifying customers inside.

Judge Hughes said Morgan’s father, Phillip Morgan, had acted “quite heroically” by racing ahead to warn the landlord and help clear the pub before the bulldozer arrived.

“You deliberately drove it into the front porch of the pub, causing significant damage and, more importantly, great fear to those who had been inside,” the judge said.

Morgan later drove over another vehicle as he headed towards his estranged wife’s home.

The rampage was eventually stopped when his father mounted a digger and smashed the bulldozer’s dashboard bucket-first after earlier attempts to disable the vehicle by cutting its diesel pipe had failed.

Morgan was arrested bleeding from a head wound while still sitting inside the bulldozer cab. Police said he later admitted he had been “really drunk” and had “just seen red”.

The court heard Morgan had been drinking heavily and taking cocaine following the breakdown of his marriage and had been living with his father at the time.

Shocked

Defence barrister Stephen Thomas said those who knew Morgan had been shocked by what happened and described him as a previously hard-working and trustworthy man.

“This was a relatively young man who was undergoing a breakdown, a man who did something that was so truly out of character,” he said.

Crown prosecutor Ryan Randall said Morgan had shown “a complete disregard for the safety of other people”.

Detective Sergeant Jenna Herbert described the incident as “a thoughtless and targeted attack on a pub”.

“Morgan has caused substantive damage to both the pub and multiple vehicles. It’s lucky that no-one was seriously hurt in this incident,” she said.