Officer ‘used hammer to enter home’

THE wife of a police officer has told a court that her husband smashed his way into the marital home with a hammer as she and her daughter cowered.

Julie Purves said she was “terrified” when David Purves started hammering the back door in a bid to burst the locks.

She told Livingston Sheriff Court that she and her daughter desperately dialled 999.

David Purves, a 46-year-old Central Scotland Police officer, has pleaded not guilty to behaving in a threatening and abusive manner at the home in Linlithgow, West Lothian, on November 20 last year.

The court was told that the couple had argued the previous evening because Mrs Purves regarded the marriage as “over”. Under cross-examination, Mrs Purves denied threatening that she would “end her husband’s police career”. The trial, before Sheriff Grahame Fleming QC, was adjourned.