Bodybuilder on illegal steroids suffocated his girlfriend in shocking attack

SHE WAS LEFT STRUGGLING TO BREATHE AND HE COULD EASILY HAVE KILLED HER

- By MARK NAYLOR [e-mail] @GTMarkNaylor

AN aggressive bodybuilder had been taking illegal anabolic steroids before he suddenly turned nasty towards his terrified girlfriend and started to suffocate her narrowly avoiding it becoming a “murder”.

She was left struggling to breathe and unable to shout and he could easily have killed her during the frightening and potentially “catastrophic” incident.

On a later occasion, he was “driving like crazy” during a bad-tempered argument while they were out for a drive in a van and he slammed the passenger door shut, trapping her foot while he drove off at speed, Hull Crown Court heard. Michael Dann, 40, of Park Avenue, west Hull, denied offences of intentional suffocation between March 31 and April 15, 2023 and assaulting the woman, causing actual bodily harm, on May 3, 2023 but he was convicted after a trial before a district judge at Hull Magis trates' Court on August 26.

Judge Richard Woolfall told a sentencing hearing that Dann and the woman spent the night together and she later asked him an “innocent” question about arrangements involving his son. In response, Dann “dived on top of her” and pushed down on her chest, causing her to suffocate.

“She was unable to breathe or shout,” said Judge Woolfall. “You only stopped when your nose began to bleed. You blamed her for that.

“It only takes a little bit more pressure than somebody intends to apply for the effect or impact to sometimes be quite catastrophic. Many murder cases up and down the country are on that basis.”