HUDDERSFIELD MAN JAILED FOR VIOLENT STRANGULATION AND ASSAULT ON EX-PARTNER
A Huddersfield thug got himself "tanked up" in the pub before going to his ex-girlfriend's home and strangling her so hard she could not breathe.Callum Barker, 29, and the woman had previously been in a relationship and he believed they would get back together after she was "friendly" towards him, but turned violent when he became suspicious over another man.
Leeds Crown Court heard on Wednesday that Barker - who fell to be sentenced for criminal damage and assault occasioning actual bodily harm - turned violent almost two years ago on April 24, 2022.
Prosecutor Christopher Dunn told the court: "The defendant turned up at her house in drink and unannounced to challenge her about another man.
"He bit her lip and grabbed her ears and threatened to headbutt her.
He was pulling her by her hair and strangled her on two occasions.
She couldn't breathe.
She told the defendant that she couldn't breathe and he replied: 'I don't care if you can't breathe.'" Mr Dunn said before the attack, Barker had gone to the pub to get "tanked up" to "challenge her." He added: "This incident had a catastrophic effect on her." In a victim impact statement read to the court, the woman described her mental health since the incident as a "rollercoaster." She said: "In the beginning, I felt as if I was in shock and like it wasn't happening to me.
I felt I was there in person but in mind I was walking around in a daze.
I survived the first few days on adrenaline." "I have two children and have had to get back into the routine of being a parent.
I have nightmares and flashbacks.
I barely slept during the first few weeks or couple of months.
Even when I slept I would wake up with heart palpitations and I kept waking up thinking I could hear Callum's voice in my house or that he was stood next to me." His Honour Judge Batty said the woman was forced to take three months off work following the incident.
He said Barker, of Britannia Road in Milnsbridge, believed the pair would get back together following a split she had gone through with another man.
The judge said: "She was becoming friendly with you and is described as a big girl with a big heart and she would cook for you and look after you..." It was said the woman had seen another former partner the night before the attack and Barker was "furious" and went away and "fuelled" himself with alcohol and "came back drunk and livid." The judge also mentioned Barker turned away a neighbour during the attack and smashed the woman's mobile phone so she could not call for help.
The judge told him: "She had no idea how it was to end...
The only thing that stopped you was the police coming around and dragging you off after you fought with them." Mitigating, Katherine Robinson told the court Barker has a mental disorder and thought "this was a relationship beginning again." She said a pre-sentence report "suggests he doesn't have the best insight." Judge Batty jailed Barker for two years and three months and made him the subject of an indefinite restraining order.
