Grand National trainer jailed for vicious hockey stick attack on dog walker

Evan Williams, one of Welsh racing’s best-known trainers, was jailed for three years at Cardiff Crown Court after a unanimous jury found him guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent. The 55-year-old from Llancarfan in the Vale of Glamorgan was convicted over a violent attack that has landed a serious reputational blow to a figure long linked with the Grand National and Welsh National scene.

The assault took place on the evening of 4 December 2024, when Martin Dandridge, 72, from Swindon, Wiltshire, was walking his cockerpoo, Gulliver, near Williams’ land while staying in a nearby holiday cottage with his wife. Dandridge suffered a fractured arm and other serious injuries. He later said the attack left him in constant pain and changed the way he feels about himself. The jury took about 90 minutes to return its guilty verdict.

Recorder Angharad Price told Williams that it was never acceptable to take the law into your own hands. Williams had argued that he believed the lights on the land meant Dandridge was lamping, and his defence said he had been affected by a prior incident about six weeks earlier when poachers threatened him with a shotgun and said they would burn his house down. The court heard that Williams should have called the police instead of confronting Dandridge.

The case cuts deep in racing because Williams was not a minor backroom name. He trained Secret Reprieve, the 2020 Welsh Grand National winner, and had five successive top-four finishes in the Grand National between 2009 and 2013. His defence said he was training about 120 racehorses and employing 30 people at the time of the assault, a reminder of how much one trainer’s conduct can affect a whole stable and the wider sport’s image.

The immediate professional consequence has been the transfer of the training licence to his wife, Cath Williams. Since then, Ask Brewster, running in her name, won the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Handicap Chase at Cheltenham, keeping the yard visible on one of jump racing’s biggest stages even as the case hangs over the operation. For racing, the issue is no longer only the sentence. It is the damage done to trust, the pressure on accountability, and the uncomfortable question of how a high-profile trainer tied to major festival success became an off-track headline for all the wrong reasons.