A drunken lout who throttled a 16-year-old girl in a wedding punch-up has been jailed.
Barnsley man Jonathan Waite, 48, denied wrapping his hands around the teen’s neck after he was chucked out of the wedding reception – claiming instead that he had been trying to push her away.
But his defence was rejected by the Oxford magistrates, who convicted him in July of the attack outside a pub in Freeland last October.
READ MORE: Judge describes post-reception throttling as 'post-marriage mayhem'
Sending him to prison for 21 months at Oxford Crown Court on Friday (October 6), Judge Michael Gledhill KC accused Waite of ‘completely and utterly ruining’ the happy couple’s day.
He told the Barnsley bruiser, who has previously gone to prison for throttling his partner: “You are a 48-year-old man. You are heavily built. You are old enough to know better.
“And, as a result of your previous convictions, you know what happens when you commit offences of violence, particularly strangulation.”
Earlier, prosecutor Julian Lynch said Waite and his partner were guests at a wedding reception at Freeland village hall on October 8 last year.
He was ‘very drunk’, the barrister said. There was an ‘incident’ when Waite allegedly touched a woman ‘inappropriately’ on the dancefloor, although it was not suggested he had done anything criminal.
A number of verbal exchanges ensued between Waite’s partner and the teen girl whom the defendant later assaulted and who cannot be identified as she is still under-18.
Eventually, Waite and his partner were asked to leave the wedding reception.
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Mr Lynch said: “It seems to an extent they did leave and Mr Waite went over to sit in a pub opposite the venue.
“Nevertheless, [the victim] pursued Mr Waite over to that venue. It seems, perhaps, she didn’t think that was far enough away from what was going on.”
It appeared she planned to confront the defendant’s partner, demanding of him: "Do you know where your piece of s*** girlfriend is?"
Waite did not take kindly to the question, the court heard. Instead, he responded violently, grabbing her by the neck and causing the pair to tumble to the ground.
He punched her around five times, telling the girl: “I’m going to f***ing kill you, why did you say that?”
The defendant, of Dodworth, Barnsley, was found guilty by the magistrates of intentional strangulation and common assault.
He had five previous convictions and, at the time of the wedding bust-up, was on post-prison sentence licence having been given 12 months in late 2021 for causing actual bodily harm.
Mitigating, Jonathan Stone said his client, who had gone to the pub to wait for a taxi, ‘struggles with dispute resolution’ and was brought up to ‘ask questions second’.
“He’s got to move with the times and he’s got to accept that drinking to excess doesn’t help with dispute resolution,” the barrister added.
A restraining order bans Waite from contacting the teen victim for five years.
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