Computer Scientist Guilty Of Bloody Bin Domestic

Guilty: Lee Momtahan

A computer scientist has been convicted of repeatedly striking his businesswoman wife’s head with a disintegrating plastic bin during a bloody domestic row.

Oxford University graduate Lee Momtahan, 48, was seen by houseguests using carpet cleaner to remove bloodstains from the floor of the £850,000 family home.

An Inner London Crown Court jury convicted him of assaulting Sarah Boada-Momtahan, 44, causing her actual bodily harm, at the Tulsemere Road, West Dulwich house on October 26, 2019.

It was the second trial after the first resulted in a hung jury and Momtahan was bailed until December 1 for sentencing.

The mother-of-two Fine Arts graduate told the court her husband continued striking her as hard as he could as the bin was smashed to pieces.

“He put me in a headlock with his arm around my neck. This was after I had been thrown into the wall of my daughter’s bedroom,” said Sarah, the owner of ‘Sanders of Oxford’, a landmark antique print and map shop.

“I was thrown into the wall with such force it caused my jaw to slam shut and my teeth to fracture,” she told the jury.

Momtahan’s father and his wife were visiting the couple and they had all enjoyed a family meal at a local Chinese restaurant.

Afterwards, the guests heard the commotion upstairs and witnessed former IBM employee Momtahan - who now heads a quantitative analysis department - attempting to clean the bloody carpet.

Ironically, Sarah had intimate knowledge of the bin, telling the trial she academically studied that particular design over twenty years ago.

The row erupted at approximately 8.00pm during a dispute over getting their son and daughter to bed.

“He grabbed the bin and hit me over the head with it as hard as he could,” she continued. “I just froze and he just kept hitting me.

“He was swinging the bin around and hitting my head repeatedly and the bin broke while he was hitting me with it. He kept hitting me with the broken bin.

“I felt the bin slice open the back of my head,” added Sarah, who left a trail of blood to the bathroom, where a towel was wrapped around her head.

She was taken to King’s College Hospital, where the wound was glued shut.

Momtahan’s lawyer Matthew Radstone asked Sarah at the first trial: “You were the aggressor weren’t you? He says you punched him hard to the back of the head.”

She denied the claims, admitting she did not think she was still in love with her husband at the time and was investigating the possibility of divorce.

“You were blocking him from leaving weren’t you?” asked the lawyer. “There was never any chokehold or throwing you against the wall, was there?

“All he could do was strike you with the bin to get you off of him,” asked Mr. Radstone. “That’s not what happened,” replied Sarah.

Momtahan, who has since moved out rot a flat in Balham Grove, Balham told the jury: “I felt a blow to the back of my head and thought she was punching me. She grabbed my left arm and started pulling.

“I instinctively resisted. I was totally freaked out, panicked and scared, said the Math & Computer Science graduate.

“I first saw the lampshade, but that was too heavy and I then saw the plastic bin, which was relatively lightweight and not that dangerous and managed to reach it.

“I picked it up and and just hit her to try and get her off me. I was not trying to harm her, just get her off me because my arm was being injured.

“I didn’t hit her very hard. The bin cracked and shattered into pieces and there was nothing left.

“I then saw blood and realised I was hitting her with a sharp object and I’m very sorry about that,” added an emotional Momtahan.

“I then tried to clean up the mess.”