has previously heard<\/a> that Corner hit Evans in the back with the sledgehammer \u2013 while she was on all fours, facing away from him, attempting to arrest Rogers \u2013 fracturing the officer\u2019s spine.<\/p>\nOn Wednesday, Corner, who is autistic and squeezed an anti-stress toy while giving evidence, said that before he struck Evans he was anxious, scared and panicked, having been sprayed \u201cstraight in the face\u201d with Pava spray \u2013 similar to pepper spray \u2013 and heard his co-defendants screaming.<\/p>\n
He said he had also been taken aback by the presence of security guards on the factory floor as he was told beforehand they would not attempt to confront the activists.<\/p>\n
Asked by his barrister, Tom Wainwright, why he swung the sledgehammer at Evans, Corner said: \u201cTo protect. I heard someone screaming \u2026 and I thought she was being seriously hurt by security.\u201d<\/p>\n
The barrister asked Corner what he had hoped to achieve in \u201cbringing the sledgehammer down in the way you did\u201d.<\/p>\n
In response, he said: \u201cTo protect her.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI would never want to seriously hurt anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former University of Oxford linguistics and philosophy student said he was \u201cvery scared, especially for the others\u201d.<\/p>\n
Corner, who has been held in prison since being arrested on 6 August 2024, also said he did not realise police officers had arrived as opposed to just security guards. He told the court he had never been arrested, been in a fight nor used violence prior to the incident at the Elbit factory.<\/p>\n
Asked by Wainwright what the intention of the action was, Corner said: \u201cWe intended to destroy weapons and things needed to make weapons which we believed were going to be used to cause death and destruction. We wanted to shut Elbit down, shut this facility down for as long as possible so they couldn\u2019t make or export weapons from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
In cross-examination, the prosecutor Deanna Heer KC asked Corner whether as an \u201cintelligent person\u201d he would know that a sledgehammer was capable of causing \u201creally serious harm\u201d.<\/p>\n
He replied in the affirmative, but added: \u201cWhen I did this I was panicking, I was in pain, I\u2019d just been pepper-sprayed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heer asked him about his reaction when arrested for grievous bodily harm, suggesting it should not have come as a surprise to him. But Corner told the court: \u201cI was shocked and scared because I wasn\u2019t expecting to be arrested for that and I wasn\u2019t trying to cause serious harm to anyone. It wasn\u2019t something I ever saw myself doing or being arrested for or being associated with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corner will resume giving evidence on Thursday after proceedings had to be cut short because he felt unwell.<\/p>\n
The defendants deny all the charges. The case continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Palestine Action activist who struck a police officer with a sledgehammer during a protest at an Israeli-linked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-544978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}