Met officer attacked her female detective lover in row over salt
A PASSIONATE affair between two female detectives came to a violent end when one throttled the other in a row over putting salt on a meal.
Asweina Gutty, 34, screamed, ‘are you for real?’ at Sharon Etheridge after the married mother seasoned the dinner that Gutty had ‘spent hours’ making for her.
The pair – both detective constables with the Metropolitan Police – then ate in silence before ‘volatile’ Gutty grabbed her lover by the throat and banged her head against the wall when she tried to leave, magistrates were told.
With ‘rage in her eyes’, Gutty fumed: ‘Go back to your nice house and f*** your husband.’
In a victim statement, Miss Etheridge said her partner was prone to angry outbursts over the slightest things and often subjected her to verbal abuse including insults such as ‘you white people’.
Prosecutor Edward Cohen said: ‘Both the defendant and the complainant are females in a same-sex relationship. Miss Etheridge is married with children and living partly with her family. They met at work, where they are both serving police officers and the complainant came to Ms Gutty’s flat on the day of the assault.
‘They had an argument because the complainant put some salt in her dinner.’
The court heard Gutty had screamed: ‘Are you for real? I’ve spent hours making f****** dinner and you’ve put f****** salt in it.’ Mr Cohen added: ‘The atmosphere soured and they ate in silence and Miss Etheridge went into the bedroom to get her things.’
Westminster magistrates’ court heard this angered Gutty, who shouted: ‘ Run away like you always do. You’re a coward. Just walk away and do what you do best, go back to your nice house and f*** your husband.’
Mr Cohen said: ‘ The defendant then grabbed her around the throat and pushed her back, causing Miss Etheridge to bang her head against the wall.’
Both officers work in Tower Hamlets, East London, and met last September while serving on a community safety unit.
Gutty, of Stoke Newington, north- east London, pleaded guilty to assaulting her ex-girlfriend on May 27 and will be sentenced next month.
The court heard that following the assault, the defendant told the victim: ‘If you try and do me over, I’ll come and find you.’
Gutty then proceeded to bombard the victim with texts and phone calls before Miss Etheridge reported her to police.
‘She said during the relationship the defendant was very volatile and would go off over trivial things,’ Mr Cohen said.
Miss Etheridge said it ‘was breaking her heart’ to report her ex whom she ‘ loved so much’. But she said her partner often erupted like a ‘volcano’.
‘Asweina screamed at me because I couldn’t put stuff in a bag at the supermarket and because I left a used tissue near the bed,’ she said.
‘She did not want me to see my friends because of her jealousy. Her reactions were like a volcano, shouting at me and I’d apologise just to keep her calm.
‘There were also insults like, whore, slag and “you white people”.’
She added: ‘We had an extreme connection, we became inseparable, being with her was amazing. When my family found out, I lost them, but if being with Asweina meant losing my family then so be it.
‘We were going to live together, have a family, have adventures, travel and live life to the full.’
She said that during the row over the salt, Gutty ‘belittled’ her and spoke to her like she was a child. ‘ She followed this with anger and a rage in her eyes,’ she said. ‘Asweina became someone else and I feared for my safety. I saw then that this surely could not be love.
‘Asweina destroyed us and our future and everything that we had fought so hard for. I never in a million years expected to be the victim of domestic abuse. I always thought it was something that happened to other people, not people like me.
‘I loved her so much, but the monster within her is more dominant than the loving woman I fell in love with.’
District Judge Nina Tempia said of the defendant: ‘ What concerns me is she is a serving police officer prone to anger outbursts and she is dealing with members of the public.’
Gutty claims her behaviour was the result of post traumatic stress because of disturbing incidents in her police work, and was triggered by a training course in March. She is currently on restricted duties.
‘Her reactions were like a volcano’