A HUSBAND must choose between his wife and his home after a court ordered both to leave their flat within ten weeks.

Neighbour menace Katrina Minns must be gone for good within 42 days from the street she has turned into a living hell for its residents, Recorder Paul Miller said at York County Court.

If she does so and never sets foot in Fossway again, then William James Minns can go back to court at the end of ten weeks and ask the judge to suspend the eviction order. Then he could continue to live in the council flat that has been his home for 12 years.

But if she doesn't leave in 42 days, or if she leaves and he allows her back into the flat, then he will join her on the streets.

The Evening Press reported, yesterday, how Katrina Minns made life a misery for others living in Fossway with a catalogue of harassment, antisocial behaviour and nuisance, including threatening to make a pregnant women miscarry, throwing rubbish at neighbours' windows and writing insulting letters and signing them in a neighbour's name, York County Court was told.

Mr Minns, who has been married to his wife for six years, said: "I love my wife. I don't want anyone to have any doubt. She has given birth to my son and that is the greatest gift that any woman can give to a man."

But the self-confessed schizophrenic alcoholic said he had no control over her and her anti-social behaviour

"She's crackers," he said and later: "She is a compulsive liar but I don't have anything against that."

Asked if he would let her in if she had nowhere to go and came to the Fossway flat he said: "I love my wife. I am not going to see her freezing cold on the streets."

Updated: 09:19 Saturday, March 25, 2006