A wifebeater armed himself with a baseball bat and took out his fears about potentially developing Huntingdon’s Disease on his brother-in-law.

Lee Pitt rained down blows with the metal bat then, when his victim managed to wrestle the weapon off his attacker, jabbed with his fists.

The 39-year-old told the man that he would kill him. The violence only ended when the victim’s wife got in between the men and neighbours shouted that they had called the police.

The victim had been running over to the home in Norris Close, Abingdon, Pitt shared with the man’s sister when she called him on the evening of April 24 begging: “He’s going to kill me. Help me, help me.” A year earlier, in 2020, Pitt received a community order for attacking her.

As he walked into the street, the victim saw Pitt behind the wheel of his partner’s car, prosecutor Christopher Pembridge told Oxford Crown Court on Monday.

He pulled the car over, grabbed a baseball bat and set about the man after chasing him down.

Mitigating, Shekyena Marcelle-Brown said Pitt was due to get tested for Huntingdon’s Disease when he carried out the assault. The degenerative brain condition had claimed the lives of his dad and a brother. The defendant was ‘experiencing a high level of anxiety’ and had taken out his frustrations on his brother-in-law.

Pitt, of Brasenose Road, Didcot, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to affray, causing actual bodily harm and possession of an offensive weapon.

Jailing him for 14 months, Judge Maria Lamb acknowledged that Pitt had had a difficult upbringing and had struggled with drug addiction and poor mental and physical health.

She said: “That is of little consolation to your victim and it certainly doesn’t entitle you to go about meting out violence which in turn causes anxiety and misery to those who are the recipients of it.”

The judge added: “I am told what lies behind this is...that you have mental health difficulties and you were very anxious at the time because of the conditions of other family members and the problems that they have health-wise, which I perfectly well understand and one can see how that may have made you feel unhappy and distressed at the time.

“But the reality of what happened that night is that this was an explosion of out of control temper fuelled by drink.”

Pitt was said to have two children. He was now single and had moved away from Abingdon. A supportive reference was provided by his employer, a drain cleaning company.

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