Policeman is jailed for attacks over wife affair

A JEALOUS police officer who tried to throttle his wife and then attacked her new boyfriend has been jailed for eight months.

Gavin Thrippleton’s wife Charlotte thought she was going to die in the attack after he found out that she was seeing another man.

Thrippleton, then an officer in Greater Manchester, lost his temper during a domestic argument in March 2010.

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Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday he tried to strangle his wife in the bedroom of their home in Charles Street, Brighouse.

Thrippleton’s wife, now known as Charlotte Bolton, passed out after being put in a headlock.

She eventually managed to get free and fled the house.

Judge Peter Benson told Thrippleton: “You were a trained police officer who should have known how to control his emotions and should have known the dangers of the sort of physical attack you launched upon her that night.”

Thrippleton, 30, was bailed but just a few weeks later saw his wife and her new boyfriend Matthew Baylis-Jones out cycling while he was on a bus.

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Thrippleton then got off the bus and started punching Mr Baylis-Jones.

Other members of the public intervened and Thrippleton himself ended up seriously injured.

Thrippleton, who has now resigned from the force, was found guilty by jury in December of assaulting his wife occasioning her actual bodily harm.

At an earlier hearing he had been convicted of common assault on Mr Baylis-Jones.

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Thrippleton’s barrister Chloe Fairley said his conviction had resulted in him losing a position he had worked hard to get.

“In essence his life is ruined,” said Miss Fairley.

She submitted that a custodial sentence could be suspended, but Judge Benson said Thrippleton’s response to the break-down of his marriage had been “violent in the extreme”.

Thrippleton was sentenced to six months in jail for the assault on his wife and a further two months for the common assault on Mr Baylis-Jones.