‘Vindictive’ Kettering man told former partner he was going to kill her – then spent nine hours trying to get into her house
A man who threatened to kill his former partner managed to flood her house after he broke in.
On August 28 last year, Drew Sibley sent his former partner of nine years a message telling her that if she stopped him seeing the children he would take his younger child away and ‘kill them all’, adding that if ‘he couldn’t have them, nobody could’.
Then six days later he went to her house and spent hours trying to break in while she was out.
He was at Northampton Crown Court for sentence last week. He appeared via videolink from prison with his hair tied up in a bun and wearing a grey t-shirt.
Prosecuting, Ben Gow said that Sibley, of Clifton Grove, Kettering, had no intention of carrying out the threat and did not have the means to do so.
Nevertheless, on September 3, Sibley went to his former partner’s Kettering home and was seen on CCTV coming in and out of the garage, to which he had forced entry.
At 5.06pm he was seen on the camera with a screwdriver trying to remove a window, before pacing around at the back of the property and attempting to get into the patio doors.
At just after 9pm the camera spotted him trying to prise open the bathroom window and kitchen door.
By 10.20pm the 35-year-old had managed to get into the house and at 10.55pm he attached a hosepipe from the garden and stuck it through the kitchen door.
Then at 2am he was seen on camera saying ‘this is going to be bad’. He then fell asleep outside her house.
Eventually the woman returned home to find ‘considerable’ damage to her doors, windows and her garage door. Her kitchen flooring was ‘soaked through’. Sibley had also sprayed gold writing all over her walls.
Mr Gow said: “This was a prolonged incident that seemed to have lasted hours, through the evening and the early hours of the morning.”
In a victim personal statement the woman said that she had suffered bad dreams and poor sleep and had had to go to therapy.
Sibley admitted burglary, criminal damage and sending a death threat.
Mitigating Beverley Da Costa said that her client accepted his offences crossed the custody threshold but said that the had been scared he would lose contact with his young children. She asked the judge to suspend the sentence
His Honour Judge John Head said that Sibley had walked out of his probation appointment, saying that the probation officer was ‘biased’.
He said that the defendant had previous convictions for battery, harassment and breaching a restraining order and that his compliance with probation orders had been ‘poor’.
"His record speaks for itself, doesn’t it?” said Judge Head.
He said that Sibley’s acts were ‘nasty and vindictive’ and that he ‘couldn’t possibly’ suspend the prison term.
The court also dealt with a separate incident which saw Sibley convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Judge Head heard how Sibley had been staying at a budget hotel in Llanfoist, Abergavenny, Wales, on 13 November 2023 with two other friends. They had booked the room as two adults but three of them were staying there so they were challenged by staff.
Late in the evening, one of the party went down to reception and asked that they be moved as they had ‘trashed’ the room.
The manager went to check and saw that the TV had been ripped from the wall and coke was splashed all over the room.
The group was asked to leave, and they did, but Sibley returned to the hotel, saying he’d left his phone in the room and wanted to get it. The manager refused the request.
Prosecuting, Ben Gow, told Northampton Crown Court: “Sibley lunged toward him and punched him in the face causing him to fall to the ground."
Sibley then went and retrieved his phone. The manager was taken to hospital suffering from a laceration to his face. He had stitches in his bottom lip and between his nose and upper lip.
In a victim personal statement the worker said that he had loved his job but had had to take time off after the incident.
"It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” he said, adding that his colleagues and guests were usually ‘nice’.
Mr Gow said: “He often lies in bed, awake, reflecting on the incident, mulling it over in his mind. He wonders how it could have happened.”
Sibley was convicted of actual bodily harm at Newport Magistrates’ Court following a trial.
Judge Head gave Sibley a total jail term of 32 months, of which he will serve at least 40 per cent. He was also given a restraining order banning him from contacting his victims and from going to two specific streets in Kettering.