Jail for choking

Victim lost consciousness during attack

A TOOWOOMBA man who choked his de facto partner until she lost consciousness has been jailed for two and a half years.

Leslie John Anthony Rogers, 41, and the woman had been together for about five months and were living together when an argument broke out on the evening of September 23, 2021, Toowoomba District Court was told on Tuesday.

The woman retreated to the bathroom to get away from the argument but he followed and backhanded her across the mouth, leaving her with a split lip, Crown prosecutor Nicole Friedewald told the court.

He then grabbed her around the throat, squeezed and lifted her up until she was barely touching the floor with her toes before losing consciousness, she said.

When she came to, Rogers was standing over her and he had then kicked her to the legs, Ms Friedewald said.

The woman called police who arrested Rogers that night and she was taken to hospital with abrasions to her neck, a cut lip and bruising to her hand and legs, the court was told.

Ms Friedewald said Rogers had been convicted of stalking and threatening violence against a previous partner in 2010 and submitted a period of imprisonment as on this occasion the assault had taken place in the home the couple shared “where she was entitled to feel safe”.

Rogers pleaded guilty to two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one of strangulation in a domestic setting.

His barrister Wesley Seewald told the court after his arrest Rogers had spent 35 days in custody before securing Supreme Court bail which included the condition that he stay out of Toowoomba except for court attendances.

His client had therefore been on bail for 17 months which was made more onerous because he owned his home here in Toowoomba, he said.

Rogers worked on a mine site and that job would be available for him when he was released from prison, he said.

The woman’s victim impact statement had been read to his client and he had written a letter of apology to be passed onto her should she accept it, Mr Seewald said.

Judge Tony Rafter SC sentenced Rogers to two and a half years in jail but, declaring the 35 days of presentence custody as time already served under the sentence, ordered he be released on parole as of October 7, 2023, after having served nine months.