An Exminster pub landlord has been cleared of threatening two customers with an axe after telling a jury he has been framed.

David Layfield was found not guilty of taking the axe into the road outside the Stowey Arms in Exminster after a jury was told there were significant discrepancies between the main prosecution witnesses.

He was alleged to have followed two customers out of the pub after a closing time bust up while waving a small hand axe above his head and threatening to kill them.

Layfield denied ever fetching the axe and was found not guilty after his solicitor Warren Robinson pointed out a long list of discrepancies to the jury.

The two complainants were Exminster resident Christopher Haynes, who lived nearby but was shortly moving to London, and a friend who had come over for the night with another man.

They had been drinking champagne and wine at home with Mr Haynes’s partner and all four had then gone on to the Stowey Arms.

The trouble started at closing time when an argument broke out between Miss Cameron and Layfield’s wife Melanie which led to a fracas outside the pub.

Mr Haynes and Miss Cameron told the jury they walked away and shortly afterwards saw Layfield with the axe.

Their accounts varied with one placing the confrontation just up the road from the pub and the other more than 100 yards away. The also described different people being with them when the incident took place.

Former Royal Marine Layfield denied ever having the axe and said he went outside to find his wife on the ground after being assaulted and took her back inside the pub, where they both stayed.

Layfield, aged 56, who lives at the pub in Exminster, denied threatening the customers with an bladed article and was found not guilty.

He said the complainants had fabricated the allegations to deflect attention after one of them assaulted his wife Melanie.

He said he had run the pub for about a year before the incident but has more than ten years experience in the trade and has run eight pubs in Exeter and Ottery St Mary.

He said the trouble started when Miss Cameron and a friend who was with her asked for drinks after time and she became abusive when he refused.

He said:"As they went towards the door the girl shouted at my wife. I went outside where there was a fracas with another group of people coming up the road.

"There was a lot of shouting going on and I saw my wife on the floor. She had been hit. She got up and went into the pub and I followed her in. The people outside dispersed.

"I got back in and switched the lights out in the bar. There were three to four people finishing their drinks. I got the keys and checked Mel was okay at the bar. She was a bit tearful and sat on a stool.

"I went outside and picked up four umbrellas and brought them back into the bar and I just shut the bar down. I did not pick up an axe or go out again."

He said his only explanation of the allegation against him was that it was a conspiracy on the part of the prosecution witnesses.

He said:"I can only think one of them hit my wife and they are covering up for him."

ends