Ex-Arsenal FC footballer jailed for strangling former girlfriend who told him to turn music down
Ex-Arsenal FC footballer jailed for strangling former girlfriend who told him to turn music down
Share:
An ex-Arsenal trainee who throttled his former girlfriend when she told him to turn off his music and stop inhaling laughing gas has been jailed for two years. Jaydon Thorbourne flew into a rage and punched a wall before physically attacking Jihan Raj in her own home. Harrow crown court heard Thorbourne, 27, dragged Ms Raj to the ground by her hair, knocking her head against a door frame, and then placed her in a headlock.
He then strangled Ms Raj until she was struggling to breathe, as she battled to break free and bit him in self-defence. On Wednesday, Thorbourne was sentenced to two years in prison for the attack, as well as being banned from contacting Ms Raj, the mother of his child, for the next ten years. The court heard Thorbourne’s promising football career went off the rails when a hip injury at the age of 18 wrecked his dreams of becoming a Premier League footballer.
He has spent most of the last four years in prison, after racking up a series of convictions for fraud as he attempted to maintain his luxury footballer lifestyle. The court heard Thorbourne and Ms Raj have a child together, but had broken up by the time he went to her home on July 4, 2023 to collect a pair of football boots. Thorbourne began inhaling nitrous oxide and playing music, and reacted angrily to be told to turn the volume down and stop taking drugs.
Eventually, Ms Raj told him to leave and took away the nitrous oxide canister, “triggering” the violent attack, the court heard. Thorbourne threw a child’s toy against a wall before throwing a punch at the wall, leaving a dent. When the attack turned violent against Ms Raj, she “tried to push you away but you placed her in a headlock and strangled her”, said Recorder Michael Caplan KC. “She described being unable to breathe and attempting to bite you to get you to release.”.
The court heard Thorbourne was previously convicted in 2019 for grabbing a taxi driver around the neck in a dispute over a fare. In 2021 he was convicted of assaulting Ms Raj when she was carrying his child, after she challenged him over contact with another woman on Instagram. In a victim impact statement she delivered herself in court, Ms Raj said she has been left with lasting nerve damage from the strangulation and has been unable to work,.
“After the assault, I started suffering from nightmares”, she said. Thorbourne was already in prison ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, after he was handed a two years and five months jail term last year. He had swindled another girlfriend in the run-up to Valentine’s Day, stealing her money and raiding her bank account, as well as defrauding hotels, Pizza Hut, and a central London health clinic.
Barrister Jack Kiffin, representing Thorbourne, said the former left back, who was in the Arsenal academy and had a spell at Crystal Palace, has spent most of his 20s so far in prison “due to terrible choices”. “Mr Thorbourne was a young man who – in his own terms – utterly neglected his education as he was on a very specific track in life. “He was a promising footballer in the Arsenal academy, and believed he was going to be a professional footballer.
“He suffered a very serious injury which ended his career in his late teens, he dropped out of professional football in 2017, and from that period on he engaged in enormously reprehensible and fraudulent behaviour for which he is already serving time.”. He urged the judge to pass as short a sentence as possible, adding: “He has spent the period of time most people spend developing and becoming a better human being in the prison system. Clearly that’s his fault.”.
