A businessman who carried out an unprovoked and violent attack on his elderly parents in their own home has been jailed for 18 months.

Antony John Ellis, 54, ’snapped’ over a long-running civil dispute about the family’s trust fund business.

On May 1 this year, he drove ’fast and aggressively’ up to his parents’ home in Port St Mary and then burst into the kitchen with a ’murderous’ look on his face, the Court of General Gaol Delivery heard.

He immediately launched his violent and sustained attack, punching his 82-year-old father John about the head and upper body, causing him to fall to the floor unconscious.

His 81-old-year mother Margaret tried to pull her son away and was pushed back, falling and hitting her head on the Aga stove.

In a victim impact statement, Mrs Ellis said she was afraid her husband of 60 years was dead.

Somehow, she managed to drag herself across the floor and up to the table where she was able to call 999.

Ellis, a father of two himself, left the property after about 15 minutes.

He flagged down a police car on Arbory Road which was heading to the incident and then handed himself in at Castletown police station where, visibly upset, he told officers: ’I have assaulted my parents’.

On August 30, he pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm on his mother, and to assaulting his father occasioning actual bodily harm.

Sentencing him to a total of 18 months in jail, Deemster Alastair Montgomerie told him: ’I can only describe this case as a tragic one where there are absolutely no winners.

’I do consider your remorse is genuine. You are thoroughly ashamed at your behaviour. I consider your actions to be totally out of character.’

The Deemster said an aggravating factor was that the assault was unprovoked and had taken place in the couple’s home where they were entitled to feel safe. But he accepted that Ellis, of Baymount, Port Erin, had not driven around to his parents’ home with the intention of carrying out an assault.

’You had no clear idea what you wanted to do when you went there,’ he said.

Ellis’s mother sustained a head injury and a fracture to her right pelvic area.

Her husband suffered bruising and swelling to the right hand side of his face, around the eye and his upper shoulder and a cut to his forehead.

The court heard that relations between the defendant and his parents had broken down completely some time ago.

Such was the strained relationship, his parents had not seen their two grandchildren for five years.

The court heard that Ellis had cut short a successful career in the US, to come back to the island with his wife to run the family’s trust business.

Having built up that business, he then fell out with his parents over who benefited most from the trust, and over succession planning.

He launched civil proceedings against the trust and had not communicated with his parents for 12 months before the incident, except through the lawyers.

He felt he had been put in an ’impossible position’ and had been ’brushed aside like a leaf in the garden that has fallen from a branch,’ his defence advocate Darren Taubitz said.

The tipping point came when the defendant received another letter in relation to the civil proceedings.

’It’s clear that my client did snap,’ said Mr Taubitz.

Ellis admitted the offences with a basis of plea, accepted by the prosecution, that he didn’t recall hitting his mother but accepted he must have pushed her, and his reckless action had resulted in her being injured. In her victim impact statement, his mother said she felt ’incredibly angry’ and struggled with the fact that her son had so violently attacked her husband.

She said she now kept the doors locked and while she loved gardening, she was frightened of being outside on her own.

Her husband, in his victim impact statement, said he remembers nothing of the assault, except for coming round afterwards and hearing his wife calling his name.

He said he forgave his son for the assault but found it difficult to forgive what he did to Margaret. ’Whatever he’s done, he will always be my son,’ he said.

The couple had noticed a change in their son’s behaviour since he had started proceedings against the trust fund.

A psychiatric report diagnosed the defendant as having an adjustment disorder, linked to stress connected with the legal dispute.

A social inquiry report concluded that the risk of re-offending was low. Ellis had served nearly four months in custody on remand before he was bailed in August.