Former police officer jailed for attempting to kill partner in Manchester hotel
James Riley wasn't on duty for the Lancashire force at the time of the incident
A police officer brutally attacked his ex-girlfriend in a "jealous rage" after he learned she was planning to start a new relationship, a court has heard.
James Riley, 28, strangled PhD student Ellie Moxham and left her unconscious on a Manchester city centre hotel room floor as he phoned for an ambulance.
Miss Moxham was rushed to hospital and placed in an induced coma before she regained consciousness the following day.
On Friday, Riley, from Preston, Lancashire, was jailed at Manchester Crown Court for 16 years after he pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to attempted murder.
The couple had been in a relationship for several years and bought a house together in 2021, but it was effectively at an end by the date of the offence.
Riley, who was not on duty at the time, placed a call lasting around 10 minutes to his family, before calling anonymously for an ambulance.
He then fled the scene leaving behind the victim and trying to evade capture using several different types of transport to hide his tracks and direction of travel. This was done initially done by leaving the hotel in his car before crashing it nearby. Riley then ran from the scene and attempted to get on a bus, taxi and hitchhike back home to Lancashire.
A painstaking CCTV trawl managed to track Riley’s movements in the aftermath of the incident and further highlighted his instincts and intention on evading capture by retrieving two £250 cash transactions from different ATMs and discarding his mobile phone to ensure he could not be tracked.
Following a wide-ranging search using a number of resources including Specialist Operations across three forces in the North West, Riley was located and arrested in the early hours of the morning in West Yorkshire.
Sentencing the defendant, Judge Patrick Field KC told him:
"The relationship had become an unhappy one, characterised by jealousy and possessive behaviour on your part.
"Nevertheless, you and she had plans earlier to attend a concert in Manchester on November 10 and she was persuaded to come and stay at a hotel. A decision that I am sure she will forever regret.
"I note the observations in the pre-sentence report that you may well have interpreted her willingness to attend the concert as a hope for reconciliation.
"It is clear that she had no intention whatsoever of reconciling with you. She was intent on forming a new relationship with another man.
"As a result of that you became consumed by uncontrollable anger and a jealous rage, and you attacked her with murderous intent."
He said that Miss Moxham had no memory of the assault, but it was "clear" that Riley "gripped her throat and strangled her with such force over a significant period that her brain was starved of oxygen".
This caused her to lose consciousness, he said, and to suffer profound injuries which has led to continuing cognitive difficulties.
Judge Field went on: "To your discredit - once you realised Miss Moxham was indeed very seriously injured and in need of expert medical assistance - your first reaction seems to have been to call your parents to speak to them for about 11 minutes before, almost as an afterthought, calling for an ambulance.
"You also abandoned Miss Moxham at the scene in an effort to save your own skin.
"While I accept this was not a pre-meditated attack and you acted spontaneously, this was nevertheless a brutal and determined attempt to kill your former partner."