Operator heard screams from 'terrified' Pontefract woman who dialled 999 as ex attacked her
An operator heard the desperate screams from a “terrified” woman who had dialled 999 as her ex partner attacked her.
Shane McKeiver was jailed this week for strangling the woman during an argument at her home after he had been warned by police to stay away.
Leeds Crown Court heard that the couple had been dating for a “short period of time”, prosecutor Austin Newman said.
Police were then called to Darkfield Lane in Pontefract on the evening of August 31 last year after a neighbour had heard shouting and became concerned.
McKeiver was arrested and taken to Normanton Police Station and later released on bail, but part of his conditions were to not contact the woman or attend her address.
Two weeks later on September 14, the woman made the frantic 999 call but initially did not speak with the operator, who could hear her arguing with McKeiver. They realised the woman was in “extreme distress”, pleading with him to leave her home, which he refused.
She then spoke with operator and told them she was being attacked. The operator heard screaming before the line went dead.
Officers were quickly dispatched to her address and on arrival saw McKeiver fleeing the scene. They found the woman in a state of distress and with “visible injuries”.
McKeiver, 41, was later arrested and gave a no-comment interview. He appeared in court this week via video link from HMP Leeds where he was being held on remand and admitted a charge of intentional strangulation.
He has 38 previous convictions for 81 offences, including violence and robbery, for which he previously received a six-year jail sentence.
Mitigating, Ellie Akhgar said: “He accepts his wrongdoing. He is a man sadly with a littered history of drug and alcohol abuse largely born out of a difficult childhood.
“He has no family to speak of apart from one uncle and he feels rather alone and isolated.”
She said McKeiver, of Green Lane, Rawmarsh, Rotherham, was now on a methadone prescription to combat his heroin addiction and had been on remand for seven months.
Ms Akhgar added: “He realises the best years of his life have been wasted. He is no longer a young man and does not have the time to waste.”
Judge Andrew Stubbs KC jailed McKeiver for 25 months and said: “It’s plain that she was terrified by what you were doing - you were strangling her and it’s a terrible offence.
“You have a bad record...you present a risk to the public.”