When they left home on a Sunday morning last summer, Ann and Norman Whittle were in high spirits and looking forward to a spot of bargain hunting at a nearby car boot sale. Most Sundays the couple took their grandchildren to church, but this was the last weekend of the school holidays and the children had other plans, leaving the Whittles free to do as they pleased.

As they approached the fruit market on Glasgow’s Blochairn Road, where more than 10,000 people attend the weekly car boot sale, Ann began looking for a parking space. When another driver signalled that he was leaving, Ann jumped out of the car to direct Norman into the space. Nobody could have predicted the shocking act of violence that followed.

A 4x4 swung into view and a woman got out and began screaming and swearing at Ann, claiming the space as hers. When Ann stood her ground, the woman grabbed her by the hair, punching and kicking her. Horrified, Norman rushed to his wife’s defence, but before he reached her side he was attacked by the driver of the 4x4.

Minutes later Ann’s bruised and lifeless body lay slumped by a gate. She had suffered a fatal heart attack. As Norman cradled her body in his arms, he collapsed and was taken to hospital.

Last week Carol McMillan, 34, who carried out the attack, was sentenced to three years’ probation and 240 hours of community service. Her boyfriend, Charles Freeburn, who admitted assaulting Norman Whittle, received a six-month deferred sentence.

At his home in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Norman, 69, still cannot believe that violence with such tragic consequences did not merit a prison sentence. “As far as I’m concerned that’s just not justice, honest to God. It’s disgraceful,” he says.

“That won’t bring my wife back, she was beautiful, she never harmed anybody and I don’t accept that they were sorry.”

At times, the past 11 months have been almost unbearable. The unexpected death of his wife of 38 years, the woman he calls “his life”, has left him at a loss.

Sitting in his lounge, surrounded by mementoes of their years together including souvenirs and ornaments from the shopping excursions loved by his wife, he struggles to contain his emotions.

“Normally Ann wouldn’t shout at anybody. She was a lady and always very polite,” says Whittle. “But when I was being punched I could hear her shouting, ‘Please leave us alone, we’ve not done any harm’.

“I was getting beaten until another man pulled him off me. Then I looked over and saw Ann slumped beside a fence at the side of the road.

“She was purple with bruises and I couldn’t find her pulse so I yelled, ‘You’ve killed my wife’. But he just sneered, ‘That’ll be right’ and walked away.”

Ann had been diagnosed with angina two months before, but a post mortem revealed bruising on her brain caused by the assault.

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