A “bully” with an explosive temper was shot dead as he tried to break into a home following threats of violence, a court heard.

Matt Clements had made several telephone threats to Kenneth Batchelor before turning up at his house in Chilham in the early hours.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Batchelor, 50, stood terrified behind a window in the second floor attic he was converting as Mr Clements climbed up the scaffolding.

Cairns Nelson, prosecuting, said the 20-stone body builder had ripped open his shirt “in a macho way” and was intent on threatening or inflicting violence.

Batchelor, a self-employed mechanic specialising in Porsche cars, blasted 42-year-old Mr Clements in the chest through an open window at point-blank range with a 12-bore shotgun he legally owned.

Afterwards, Batchelor screamed hysterically down the phone to his future wife, who had been listening to the confrontation: “I have killed him.”

Mr Nelson said Mr Clements, who ran a business providing bouncers to clubs and bred dogs, had become fixated that his girlfriend was owed maintenance by Batchelor’s brother Gary over children they had together.

He started to “demand money with menaces” from Kenneth Batchelor and a third brother David. “This was nothing to do with Kenneth Batchelor,” said the prosecutor.

Mr Clements, of Wayside Avenue, St Michael’s, Tenterden, started making threatening calls to Batchelor on November 17 2007, before going to his home, Hendon Cottages in Canterbury Road, Chilham, at about 1am the next day.

“The defendant knew he was coming to his home and probably to get him - to inflict violence at a time when Mr Clements was violently attempting to pull open the window,” said Mr Nelson.

He told the jury of seven men and five women: “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.

“You will also come to the conclusion, we suggest, it is pretty certain that Matt Clements was the aggressor in this case.

“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.”

Batchelor denies murder and manslaughter.

The trial continues.