A MAN from Bradford broke down his on-off girlfriend’s door before beating her male companion in a “brutal and persistent” attack that left him needing surgery and metal plates for multiple fractures to his face.

Jailing Gavin Thorpe for two years at Bradford Crown Court, His Honour Judge Colin Burn told him: “To put it in common everyday parlance, you bashed his head in.”

Prosecutor Alisha Kaye told the court heard how Thorpe, 39, of Cross Road, off Toller Lane, went to The Drum Winder pub in Bradford city centre at around 9pm on December 21 last year in an attempt to speak to his estranged girlfriend.

She was with another man and refused his invitation for a chat.

Thorpe then punched the other man to the floor and left the pub.

The couple also left and went to her flat so that his face could be treated. Ten minutes later they heard banging in the corridor outside and banging on the door to her flat.

Thorpe then kicked his way through the door and punched the other man multiple times causing him to fall onto a bed.

A security guard who was called to the flat found blood coming from the victim’s eye socket and called an ambulance.

The victim was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary where a CT scan revealed he had suffered multiple fractures to his face, the base of his skull, right cheekbone, nose, eye socket, and jawbone.

He later underwent an operation in which three metal plates were fitted to his cheekbone and eye socket. The surgery left him with permanent scarring.

Thorpe was arrested the next day. He later pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm plus section 20 wounding on the male victim.

The woman, described by Miss Kaye as “the catalyst for the incident occurring”, was uninjured.

Mitigating, Saf Salam said Thorpe, who appeared via video link from HMP Leeds where he had been on remand for 200 days, readily accepted that the relationship had passed and was ready to face the future as a single man.

Sentencing Thorpe to 24 months imprisonment plus four months to run concurrently for the ABH, Judge Burn said he had carried out a completely unprovoked attack on an entirely blameless man in the pub and then made the decision to go to his former girlfriend’s flat to confront him again.

He said: “There were clearly very forceful and repeated punches resulting in multiple broken bones to his face.

“He’s now got permanent plates in his face to remind him of that [attack].

“The reality is that the incident itself was just too violent, too persistent, and too brutal to say that it can be dealt with by way of a suspended sentence.

“It is not appropriate for me to suspend it.”

Thorpe was also made the subject of a 10-year restraining order preventing him from having any contact whatsoever with the victim.