Hit me with and cleaver’
GUTSY GIRL DECIDES TO SPEAK OUT
A BRAVE woman has told how she escaped her fiancé who battered her with a radiator then threatened her with a meat cleaver he kept under his pillow.
Sophie Eyers, 28, became isolated and terrified when then-boyfriend Samuel James began to regularly attack her.
She says he refused to let her leave the house to see friends and family.
Things came to a head when James, also 28, suspected Sophie had found out he was cheating and threw a radiator at her, before threatening to kill her with the blade.
She was saved by police, who had been tipped off by a neighbour.
Sophie said: “I was so thankful when the police finally came to rescue me.
“I think one of the neighbours called the police and they burst in just as he was holding the meat cleaver to my throat.
“I know for a fact I’d be dead now had they not intervened.
“I wasn’t able to break free from his spell, despite how scared I was and how much I wanted to escape.”
Sophie first met James through friends in March 2018. Romance soon blossomed.
He even moved himself into her house and proposed after eight months.
But his behaviour quickly deteriorated and he became volatile and controlling.
Sophie added: “There was a constant threatening undertone from him 24 hours a day. To say I walked on eggshells is a massive understatement.
“He threatened to kill me most days and I was so scared that I could barely sleep.
“There were so many violent incidents that I can barely recall them all now.
“If I tried to leave the house without his permission he’d attack me.
“Once, he dragged me back in the house by my hair and beat me up.
“But afterwards he’d be so sorry and would gather me up in his arms and tell me he loved me.
“It messed with my head and
I wasn’t strong enough to leave.”
James repeatedly threatened his partner, including saying he would lock her in the boot of his car and “smash her teeth in”.
In another assault, he threatened his wifeto-be with a knife after he pulled up in his car as she was leaving the gym. The bully then admitted having sex with other women but blamed this on Sophie.
It was this that eventually led to his arrest, on February 2 last year.
Sophie said: “I’d no idea he was cheating on me. I denied knowing anything, but he looked livid and just didn’t believe me. “He took me upstairs to our bedroom – he was raging. He ripped a radiator off the wall and chucked it at me, hitting me in the side. “While I was down he went over to the bed and under the pillow where he kept his meat cleaver and said, ‘You’re going to cause a murder scene.’
“At that point I really thought I’d had it, he was going to kill me. His eyes were not human.
“But just as he was leaning over me with the knife to my throat, the police burst in the door. One of the neighbours called them – they basically caught him red-handed.
“I decided in that moment that I couldn’t lie for him or cover up his mistakes anymore.
“I showed the officer with my eyes where my phone was and they took it away as evidence. I felt that it was now or never and I think the decision I made then, to come clean about it all, saved my life.”
In July 2019 James, of St Ives, Cornwall, pleaded guilty to one charge of coercive and controlling behaviour, three charges of assault by beating and one charge of common assault at his trial in Cambridge Crown Court.
He was sentenced to 34 months in prison and a restraining order for 10 years.
The order prevents him from visiting St Ives and other areas.
Sophie, who used to be a shop assistant before the trauma of the attack forced her to give up work, has shared her story to help other women find the courage to leave a violent relationship.
She said: “I want other women to know that there is a way out and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”