A SHREWSBURY man who assaulted and strangled his former partner after she refused to buy him alcohol has avoided jail.
Daniel Evans, 33, and of Condover, Shrewsbury, was sentenced to 14 months, suspended for 18 months, at Chester Crown Court on Monday, November 9.
Evans had pleaded guilty on the day of trial to several offences including criminal damage, intentional strangulation, stalking and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
The court heard that the charges related in an incident at his former partner’s address on Thursday, June 19, 2025.
Police had responded to an anonymous 999 call from the address in Hatton Road, Blacon, when the complainant appeared at the upstairs window of the address.
Prosecutor Michael Staples said that officers spotted a bruise near Jodie Hughes’s left eye, but she claimed her injuries were self-inflicted, saying that she was ‘bi-polar’ and that she had ‘headbutted the wall’.
Despite saying she was alone at the address, police then heard a male voice, and Ms Hughes became ‘resistive’ towards the officers, insisting that the injury was her fault.
They began to suspect she had been the victim of domestic abuse and gained entry to the address.
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Evans was then seen at the top of the stairs, shouting abuse towards the officers and was arrested on suspicion of assault, though the complainant made statement saying she had ‘smashed her face’ into a wall-mounted television, and that Evans ‘had tried to stop her’.
The following day Evans was released on bail but breached his conditions a few days later, when he was found in loft of the Hatton Road address at which point Mr Staples said he made an unprompted comment that ‘I assaulted her, there was a domestic’.
A statement, made by Ms Hughes on Thursday, June 26, explained that Evans had ‘spent most of the day drinking’ when he came upstairs to the bedroom to ask her to go to the shop for more alcohol.
When she refused he ‘grabbed her by the hair and dragged her off the bed’, before punching her twice in the face, resulting in an injury to her eye and a swollen lip.
Ms Hughes said she was ‘too shocked’ to move, at which point Evans pushed her against the wall and squeezed her neck with both hands for a period of ‘around 60 seconds’ causing her to feel that she was losing consiousness.
After he had let go, Evans turned round and punched the TV.
In a victim personal statement, read into the record by Mr Staples, Ms Hughes said the defendant’s actions had had significant physical and psychological effects, and that she was now taking medication for conditions such as PTSD and anxiety.
She said that it had left her ‘frightened, anxious and unable to do things that I previously took for granted’.
She added: “I do not know how long it will take until I feel like myself again.”
Peter Barnett, defending Evans, said that he had minimised his behaviour at the outset but had since accepted his actions.
He added that an alcohol abstinence monitoring tag may prevent Evans from continuing work as a tree surgeon as he would be unable to wear the requisite footwear.
Recorder Mark Ainsworth said that Evans had betrayed the trust placed in him by his former partner who now ‘found it difficult to feel secure in her own home’.
Evans received a 14-month sentence, suspended for 18 months and will complete a probation requirement, a Building Choices course and 100 hours of unpaid work.
He was also ordered to pay £750 in compensation to Ms Hughes, and will be subject to a seven-year restraining order.
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