By Cam Lucadou-Wells
An Endeavour Hills woman was seconds away from death after being strangled three times by her boyfriend in her mother’s home, a Dandenong magistrate has said.
Her attacker was jailed for up to 12 months for the assaults as well as for breaching his two community corrections orders at the time at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 22 October.
In what started as a heated argument about 19 September, the man first threw her on a bed and choked her with his hands for several seconds.
This was immediately followed by a scissors leg-hold around her neck on the bedroom floor for about one minute.
During that time, the victim struggled to breathe and feared she would black out.
The man apologised and released her. She fled the home, but soon returned to collect her handbag.
He intercepted her outside the bedroom, clasping her in another choke hold from behind for 60 seconds until she started to black out.
When released, she fled from the house, calling for help from a passer-by in the street.
The accused man yelled at her from the house that “I’m going to f***ing kill you”.
He was arrested at the scene, and has been remanded in custody since the attack.
Defence lawyer Bernard Keating said the man conceded making the threat to kill but denied the extent of the alleged violence.
Mr Keating painted a picture of a man with an “unusual life” who had attended Haileybury College as well as being sometimes homeless.
The “charming young” man was able to speak well, yet had diagnosed cognitive deficiencies and had “fallen short” on a series of community corrections orders.
“The spirit seems willing but the flesh is weak.”
The court also heard the man had attempted suicide at 14, and beset by alcohol and drug issues.
He had a possible acquired brain injury after being “brutally” bashed by up to six assailants in a McDonald’s car park in Glen Waverley. He was knocked cold during the assault, and later hospitalised.
During sentencing, magistrate Jack Vandersteen noted the man had breached his community correction orders several times and been in front of the court often in recent years.
The man had been remanded, he’d been supervised on CISP bail with judicial monitoring yet the offending continued, Mr Vandersteen noted.
“Why would you put him on a community corrections order?
“Everything has been tried to have him on orders in the community.”
Mr Vandersteen said the choking of female partners was becoming more prevalent before courts.
“You don’t see blokes trying to choke each other in a pub fight, so why do you do it with your partners?”
In strangling the victim, the man had restricted blood flow and oxygen to her brain.
“She was close, if not very close to serious injury or death. It would only have taken another 60 seconds.”
The man’s sentence included one month’s jail for “historical” thefts from cars.
He is subject to a five-month non-parole period, and had already served 33 days in pre-sentence detention.
