A Keelung court has sentenced a man to six months in jail for repeatedly terrorizing his own relatives at night, a win for the family who had spent years trying to make it stop.

• The man slammed iron doors and pounded a shared wall with a hammer between 3am and 4am, shaking the building so hard that relatives upstairs thought an earthquake had hit.
• One woman on the second floor screamed for her children to run for their lives before the family called police in the middle of the night.
• He lives on one side of a duplex apartment; his nephew's family lives on the other side and above, so the vibrations carried straight through the shared structure.
• This was not his first offense — he was jailed once before for throwing paint at his nephew, and a court had already issued a protection order banning him from harassing the family.
• He denied making the noise, but his nephew, a 30-year construction veteran with military sound-location training, testified it was clearly heavy blows landing directly on the wall.

Outlook: He can appeal, and the six-month term can be converted to a fine, so the family may not get lasting relief.