Knife threat after a row over new job
A ‘SPIRITUAL’ university graduate with a love of Buddhism threatened his girlfriend at knifepoint during a row about him getting a nine-to-five job, shouting ‘don’t f*****g test me’.
Ryan Boyce, 27, lost his temper with his partner at her dad’s house in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, when she questioned him about his role at a marketing firm, saying his job made him ‘dismissive’ and ‘angry’.
During a row, Boyce grabbed a kitchen knife and brandished it at the woman, telling her ‘don’t f*****g test me or I will do something’.
She ran into the street barefoot, wearing only a dressing grown, before calling the police.
Officers attended the scene and the victim was recorded on body cam. She said: “We had a conversation about how Ryan is a very spiritual man, and likes his Hinduism and Buddhism, wants to be off grid and not be in society. I was talking about his work changing him as a person.”
At Stockport Magistrates’ Court, Bolton University graduate Boyce, who lives in Hulme, was convicted of common assault. The court earlier heard the couple were together for eight years, but began drifting apart after university. Boyce started working for a digital marketing firm in Manchester city centre. It is thought he began following Buddhism after a trip to Sri Lanka.
The incident happened on March 3 last year when the pair met at a Mediterranean restaurant, before going back to the woman’s dad’s house.
The victim wept as she told magistrates: “I started to get upset and he was getting very fidgety, he was uncomfortable and at one point he got his fists out and slammed them on the sofa. That was the point where I then didn’t want him to be there and I asked him to leave, but he just ignored me. As I am talking Ryan got up and I heard the rattling of the kitchen draw. As I turned around that is when he took the knife out. He told me not to ‘f**k with him.”
Boyce denied threatening the woman, claiming he had gone into the kitchen to cook food.
He will be sentenced later this month.