A homeowner has been cleared of murder after he shot and killed a bodybuilder at point-blank range when he tried to break into his house.

Kenneth Batchelor, 51, fired a shotgun at “very close quarters” at 42-year-old Matthew Clements, who had climbed the scaffolding of his home to try to force open an upstairs window.

Mr Batchelor had received a barrage of threatening phone calls from Mr Clements, a 20-stone nightclub bouncer, who was demanding maintenance money from the Batchelor family following a former relationship between his girlfriend and Mr Batchelor's brother Gary, which produced three children.

The jury at Maidstone Crown Court took just one hour unanimously to acquit Mr Batchelor of the murder of Mr Clements who, the court heard, had an “explosive temper” and had become “fixated” with demanding money from the Batchelor family.

Mr Batchelor wept as the jury returned their verdict. During his trial, they heard that Mr Clements started to “demand money with menaces” and had begun to make threatening phone calls in November 2007 after drinking heavily and smoking cannabis.

The court also heard that Mr Clements, from Ashford in Kent, was “well known” to police, settled disputes by violence and had once turned up at a garage to threaten the manager with an Uzi submachine gun.

Mr Batchelor, a mechanic, legally owned the shotgun which killed Mr Clements with one shot to the chest, and told the court that it had discharged accidentally as he stood terrified at a top floor window which Mr Clements was trying to open.

The court heard how Mr Clements had told Mr Batchelor that he was “coming to get him”, and had torn off his shirt before scaling the scaffolding to the top floor of Mr Batchelor’s house in Chilham in Kent at around 1am on November 18, 2007.

Cairns Nelson, prosecuting, told the jury: “You will have no difficulty, we suggest, in coming to the conclusion that, at the point Mr Batchelor shot the deceased, he was a frightened man.”

The prosecutor added: “In the circumstances, Mr Batchelor was entitled to defend himself and his property. You will hear Mr Batchelor told police the shotgun was discharged by accident in the heat of events.

“The case enters that very difficult area – the degree to which a householder can use violence to defend himself.

“What is reasonable and what is unreasonable; what goes over the line, what doesn’t go over the line. It is for the jury to decide where the line should be drawn and what is reasonable in response to a threat.”

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