Model’s boyfriend heard ‘screams for help’ on phone as ex-partner ‘beat’ her
Instagram influencer Chloe Othen, 33, says she was punched in the head 30 times, strangled and dragged along the floor by her hair by Ricky Lawrence.
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The boyfriend of a model who claims her ex-partner bit and beat her in his Knightsbridge flat told police he heard her “screaming for help” on the phone, a court heard.
Instagram influencer Chloe Othen, 33, says she was punched in the head 30 times, strangled and dragged along the floor by her hair by Ricky Lawrence, 32.
Lawrence is also accused of biting Ms Othen, taking her phone and stopping her from leaving his flat in Hans Crescent, after a text message row in the early hours of October 15 2022.
The businessman and Ms Othen had been in a relationship earlier in 2022, but were still been sleeping together despite the model having a new boyfriend, Bora Guccuk, at the time, a trial at Nightingale Crown Court in Holborn, central London, has heard.
On Thursday, jeweller Mr Guccuk told jurors he called Ms Othen’s phone on the morning of the alleged assault because he was worried about her, but Lawrence answered and threatened them both.
He alleged: “(Lawrence) told me, ‘she’s here if you want to come and get her, I’ll kill you both and stab you in the neck’.
“I could hear Chloe in the background screaming ‘he’s going to kill me’”.
In a number of calls to police, played to the jury, Mr Guccuk said he heard “chaotic” and “hysterical” screams from Ms Othen in the background.
Mr Guccuk told the phone operator: “My girlfriend is being held by her ex-boyfriend against her will in his place right now, she is screaming for help.”
The witness also said: “He is violent, very violent, he stalked her.”
Mr Guccuk told the court Ms Othen was in a “really bad state” and “covered in bruises, bleeding and crying”, claiming she did not want to go back to his house in Kensington because Lawrence knew where he lived.
Tony Wyatt, defending, asked Mr Guccuk if he was jealous of the model’s sexual relationship with Lawrence, to which he replied: “No.”
Mr Wyatt also accused Mr Guccuk of losing his temper and assaulting Ms Othen that morning, which the witness denied and said: “Absolutely ridiculous.”
Mr Guccuk claimed Lawrence “battered, bit and bashed” the model.
He said to the defence barrister: “The person on trial here is Ricky Lawrence, the fact you’re trying to turn this on me must sound ridiculous to the jury.”
Lawrence denies a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and the trial continues.