A VIOLENT man brandished a knife at his girlfriend before punching her in the ribs – just two weeks after he was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for taking part in an attack on a homeless alcoholic after a confrontation in a Rugby churchyard.
A judge has conceded he ‘did the wrong thing’ by giving a chance to Christopher Griffiths, who had been given the suspended sentence for his part in the attack with his twin brother, and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid work.
But he failed to turn up even for his induction session for the unpaid work – and committed the new offence within two weeks of the judge taking a chance with him.
Griffiths, 33, previously of Harry Park Road, Wyken, Coventry, but who was living in Rugby at the time, pleaded guilty to common assault, breaching his suspended sentence and failing to surrender to bail.
Back in front of the same judge at Warwick Crown Court, he was jailed for five months – consecutive to the six-month suspended sentence which he was also ordered to serve.
Prosecutor Suzanne Francis said that on May 17 last year, just two weeks after Griffiths was given the suspended sentence, his girlfriend’s father made a 999 call.
Griffiths, who was staying at their Rugby home at the time, had got drunk and was becoming more and more offensive.
His partner went for a bath, and when she came out she found Griffiths sitting on the bed holding a penknife, telling her to sit down next to him.
She only agreed to do so after he had handed her the knife, but he then left the house and went to buy more drink.
After he had returned, his girlfriend’s young step-brother came downstairs and they went into the kitchen where they saw Griffiths facing her father while holding a knife with an 8-inch blade behind his back.
She called out, at which Griffiths dropped the knife, and as her father called the police, he began shouting at him that he was ‘a snitch’ and ‘a grass.’
Then, as she tried to take her step-brother out of the room, he punched her hard to the ribs.
The police arrived and he was arrested, but was granted bail, and later failed to turn up at court, leading to a warrant being issued for his arrest.
The suspended sentence had been imposed for an incident following a confrontation between Griffiths and his twin brother and a homeless alcoholic in a churchyard in Church Street, Rugby.
There was a scuffle, after which the man left the park and crossed Church Street, from where he began to shout abuse at them, and they ran across the road and confronted him.
At some stage the man picked up a piece of wood to defend himself, but Griffiths’s twin took it from him, and he was then punched and kicked by both brothers before they were joined by a woman who also attacked the victim, taking a bite out of his ear.
Ian Windridge, defending, said Griffiths and his girlfriend had reconciled almost immediately, and are no longer living at her father’s home, but in a joint room at the Salvation Army hostel in Coventry.
Jailing Griffiths, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told him: “I did the wrong thing. Judges sometimes do. They give people a chance and give them the benefit of the doubt.
“I made an error of judgement, it seems, in your case. You had your chance, and you didn’t take it.
“I gave you six months imprisonment suspended for 18 months. I warned you what would happen if you came back before me – and it’s going to happen.”
