In an industry that has the stigma of drunken, abusive men doing heinous things to their loved ones, it’s stories like this that further push that agenda down the road. Let it be known, this is not what we call a “professional truck driver.”
On September 6, 2021, East Kilbride, a small community south of Glasgow, Scotland, had a rather rude interruption to their sleep around 11:25 p.m. local time. Derek Wellington, a rather unprofessional trucker, was drunk and belligerent when he arrived, with his lorry, at his estranged girlfriend’s home. And that’s where things go really wrong.
How did it come to this?
Well, first, how did we get here? Wellington and his estranged girlfriend began dating earlier that year. Sadly, Wellington was no gentleman, but more of a brute that abused her. After a hospital stay due a beating she suffered while staying at a hotel in the west end of Edinburgh on August 8 last year, he was finally arrested.
He was served a court order not to contact his ex, but that lasted all but three weeks when we return to the incident in question. On the morning of the incident, Wellington had gotten belligerently drunk and started calling the ex, demanding to see her and threatening “to put his lorry into her living room.” That was a threat he made real a short time later.
“She told him under no circumstances was he to come to the house. He stated he was coming ‘round any way.”
Crown Prosecutor Lisa Gillespie, QC
His ex-girlfriend tried to calm him down by agreeing to meet him on the street. But that’s when all hell broke loose and Wellington arrived, and backed his lorry, at speed, into the apartment building. Be aware, her children were inside at that time.
Thankfully, a neighbor rushed over and secured the children before Wellington slammed the lorry into the building a second time. A neighbor next door said the impact felt like an earthquake in her building. It was so extreme, it rotated the building on its foundation.
A menace off the streets
Wellington appeared in court July 1, 2022, and faced counts of assaulting his ex-girlfriend in Edinburgh, breaching bail, threatening behavior and spitting at a police officer. Judge Lord Armstrong remanded him in custody pending sentencing on July 27 in Stirling.
Clyde Valley Housing Association ended up with a bill totalling £475,000 (about $574,730). due to damage and loss of rental income. Seven houses had to be evacuated that night.
Those in four of the properties were later able to return, but the damage to the ex’s building and a neighbor’s was so bad, the homes had to be demolished.
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