Jealous Hartlepool boyfriend sentenced at Teesside Crown Court for false imprisonment of girlfriend

Jackson Mincher’s behaviour led his then girlfriend to think he would not let her leave his house until she gave him the name of someone in messages he found on her phone.

Teesside Crown Court heard the victim woke up in March last year to him shouting and behaving aggressively.

Prosecutor Shaun Dryden said: “It appears the defendant, while she had been asleep, had gone through her mobile phone and found messages which concerned him and made him think that she may have been seeing another boyfriend effectively.”

Mincher, 20, pushed her and tried to take her phone. She believed he would not let her leave until he was given a name.

She sent a number of texts to friends who called the police.

Mincher pleaded guilty to false imprisonment on a basis which he accepted he was reckless in the words he used during the incident.

The judge, Recorder David Brooke, said people normally go to prison for the offence.

But he said the case was “quite unusual” and he has worked well with the probation service on a community order he was given after the incident.

Rod Hunt, mitigating, said: “He has really seized the opportunity to work on himself.”

Recorder Brooke said: “It does seem the efforts you have made mean I can draw back from custody and find another way to deal with you.”

Mincher, of Fletcher Walk, Hartlepool, was given a 12-month community order with 30 rehabilitation activity days and 150 hours unpaid work, and a restraining order.