Man jailed after wife's strangling ordeal

Drug addict Terence Dale and spouse Julie had both taken drugs in the hours before the incident including the defendant smoking crack cocaine.

After arriving at the home they shared with his mother in Elm Avenue, Golborne, they went to bed, watched TV and took more drugs, said prosecutor Ken Grant. His wife fell asleep and Dale “put some blue gloves on and got some green plastic rope and put it around her neck and pulled it very tight. He was saying to her, ‘you are going to die’.

“She remembers things going very blurry and asking him to stop and she passed out. She came round sitting on the bed with her neck hurting. The defendant was saying, ‘you will not step outside the house’.”

She managed to flee and while sitting on a wall near Asda he drew alongside in his car and told her “you’ll never belong to anyone else.”

Mr Grant said she recalled him having a little jar containing inflammatory liquid which he threatened to light and throw at her, again saying she would never belong to anybody.

When the 41-year-old was arrested he said “a lot of things had been said in the heat of the moment.” He claimed she went for him so he defended himself and there was a scuffle. He said he went out to get some air and afterwards found her by Asda talking about harming herself.

In an impact statement the victim said she could not understand why he had wanted to strangle her. She said she has nightmares about it in which she cannot breathe. In them she is pleading with him to stop and “he is looking at me with pure evil in his eyes.”

Mr Grant said she did not know if he was sorry but felt he needed help for mental health issues. She said her 19-year relationship with Dale was over.

Dale had been due to face trial for attempted grievous bodily harm but this was dropped after he admitted a lesser offence of actual bodily harm.

Jailing him for two years eight months Judge Robert Trevor-Jones said: “It was quite chilling what you set about, quite brutal and utterly frightening as far as she was concerned. She naturally thought she was going to be killed by you.” He imposed an indefinite restraining order to not to contact Mrs Dale nor her Golborne home.

Defending, Philip Clemo said Dale has no previous convictions for violence and there was no evidence of domestic violence in the couple’s relationship. “She is the mother of his children and he still has feelings for her but the relationship is dysfunctional and is best left in the past.”