Mansfield thug yanked girlfriend’s steering wheel and nearly crashed the car

Daniel Amatt met the woman on a dating app, three weeks earlier, and would “drink to excess every time they met up and say the most vile things,” Nottingham Crown Court heard.

Matthew Taylor, prosecuting, said they were travelling at 30mph, with her son in the back seat ,when he began pulling the handbrake, grabbing the wheel and frightening her.

As she was driving him home, 32-year-old Amatt grabbed the wheel again and steered them towards concrete bollards.

Outside her address he tried to grab the keys, then grabbed her neck with both hands, throttling her and banging her head against the window.

As he continued to throttle her, she bit his face. Amatt flailed his arms, ripped off the rearview mirror and banged her head, before getting out with his bags.

He kicked the door the wrong way and hurled the mirror down the road before walking off.

His victim was left suffering panic attacks following the incident on December 20, 2020.

The court heard he also glassed a fellow drinker outside The Stag & Pheasant pub, on Clumber Street, Mansfield town centre, on October 16, 2019.

Amatt was confronted by the other man, having “fallen out with him over a girl a few years ago”, Mr Taylor said.

He suddenly sprang up and hit him in the head with his glass. Members of the public caught glancing blows as they tried to break the fight up.

Amatt, who has previous convictions for violence, was serving a suspended sentence at the time for criminal damage when he frightened a girlfriend so much she locked herself in the bathroom to get away from him.

And in May last year he was convicted of aggravated vehicle taking and drink driving after meeting another woman on a dating website and crashing her car while drunk.

Amatt, of Walesby Court, Mansfield, admitted assault causing actual bodily harm, criminal damage and threatening behaviour after initially denying them.

Katrina Wilson, mitigating, said she had no objection to a three-year restraining order.

Judge John Sampson jailed Amatt for two years, suspended for 21 months, and ordered him to attend the building better relationships course, and participate in 35 rehabilitation days and a 12-month alcohol treatment programme.