Woman almost died in fall from flat after row with violent boyfriend
AWOMAN nearly died after a mystery fall from the fifth floor of a tower block in Birmingham following an argument with her ex-boyfriend.
Six months later she was lured to a hotel by Darren Edwards, 23, who had pretended to be someone else in phone messages.
Birmingham Crown Court heard the thug, of Shenley Lane, Weoley Castle, then hit and punched the terrified victim.
The attack came after she had narrowly survived the horror fall on August 31 last year.
Police and emergency services were called to find the 29-year-old woman lying at the bottom of a tower block in Cock Hill Lane, Rubery. Edwards had emerged from the block and tried to give his ex-partner CPR. She had critical injuries and later had to be put into an induced coma.
The woman had no recollection of what happened and Edwards was never charged in relation to the tower block fall. Police later found a series of text messages Edwards had been sending to the victim between August 18 and 31.
When quizzed, the defendant said that following a conversation he had gone round to his former partner’s flat with a bottle of champagne.
They had chatted and drank together but he had found something on her phone which “upset” him. There was an argument “and the next thing he knew she was outside”. Birmingham Crown Court was told that in September last year Edwards was handed a 12-month community order by city magistrates after admitting breaching a restraining order.
Six months later, again in breach of the order, Edwards posed as someone else during a series of messages with the woman.
She agreed to meet and it was only when she arrived at the rendezvous, a hotel in Perry Barr, that she discovered it was the defendant she had been messaging.
Edwards told her he just wanted to talk and she agreed to go to the room he had booked.
However, he again went through her phone before repeatedly punching her in the face, causing a gash which left a permanent scar. Edwards, who admitted breaching a restraining order, assault, possessing cannabis and assaulting an emergency worker, was jailed for three years.
In passing sentence, Judge Heidi Kubic said: “You engaged in a short relationship with the complainant which ended in October 2018. However, you did not move on.”
She said that a restraining order had been made in July 2019 after he had broken into the victim’s property and assaulted another person.
She said there had been a series of text messages in August.
The judge said: “It culminated in you attending that property and you being present when she ended up falling from a fifth floor window in circumstances I am not asked to hold you responsible for.”
The judge said by Christmas he was breaching the order again and that it was an aggravating feature that he had used a false name.
She said the psychological impact had been significant on the victim, who said in a statement that she had been forced to move and that what happened had “thoroughly changed her life.”
Gerry Bermingham, defending, said it was not a serious injury Edwards had caused in the hotel room.