AN electrician-turned-drug-dealer who embarked on a “terrifying” campaign of harassment against a former Tinder date has been jailed for more than six years.
The Royal Court heard that Daniel De Caires exhibited “insane” behaviour during a prolonged period of harassment against a woman he met on a dating app.
The 32-year-old would repeatedly turn up uninvited at her home address, sometimes harassing her in front of her mother and child.
The victim – who socialised with De Caires informally during the summer of 2024 – eventually became too frightened to leave her house and had to be signed off work due to anxiety.
Following De Caires’ arrest on suspicion of harassment, police uncovered a “commercial” drug dealing operation through evidence found on his mobile phone.
He pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply, two counts of being concerned in the supply of a controlled drug, as well as a single charge of harassment.
Crown Advocate Luke Sette, prosecuting, said De Caires first met the woman after matching on dating app Tinder and began seeing each other informally.
After attending a house party together, the woman realised she did not want a relationship with De Caires and began distancing herself from him and soon began replying to “less and less” of his messages.
The court was told that shortly after this, De Caires turned up unannounced at the woman’s home “throwing stones at her windows [and] incessantly ringing the buzzer” as well as repeatedly calling her and sending several offensive messages sent on WhatsApp.
Two weeks later at a nightclub, De Caires started “making her feel uncomfortable” by “repeatedly approaching her to try and talk to her”, Advocate Sette said. He then arrived at her home address again, this time harassing her in front of her family, the court was told.
“The victim noted that his behaviour was insane as her child and mother were at the address”, Advocate Sette said.
The victim told De Caires: “The fact you don’t recognise that turning up at my house and calling me when I’ve blocked you is not okay, it’s terrifying.”
She eventually called the police after bumping into De Caires at an event, where he continued to harass her.
Advocate Sette said the victim was eventually signed off work “due to the anxiety that the defendant’s behaviour had caused her”. He added: “She struggled to eat and drink, and felt stressed when leaving the house.”
De Caires was arrested, which led to a police search of his address and the discovery of a “commercial” amount of MDMA and cocaine.
Advocate Sette referred to the “seizure of seven mobile phones, a brown wooden box containing a number of individually snap seal deal bags with white powder inside, confirmed as being 8.940 grams of cocaine”.
Footage found on his phone, found by police, showed vast amounts of MDMA and cocaine in his room and on weighing scales. It was estimated the street value of all the drugs captured by De Caires as between £30,400 and £47,700.
Advocate Nicholas Mière, defending, said his client was a qualified electrician with recent experience of working in a hospital.
He said De Caires had made “some very grave errors of judgement” during his harassment of the woman.
“Something plainly went wrong here – and that’s not a way of minimising things for Mr De Caires – but Mr De Caires in his discussion with me firmly believes that this would not have happened had it not been for his drug and alcohol use at the time.
“He appreciates that this is not an excuse – it sometimes is indeed an aggravating factor – but my explicit instructions are that he wishes that background to be made plain to the court.
“He does not feel at all like his behaviour was a true and proper representation of himself, it doesn’t reflect his past and he certainly does not want it to reflect his future.”
Delivering the court’s sentence, Deputy Bailiff Mark Temple, presiding, told De Caires that the “overall conclusion” of the court was for a sentence of six years and nine months imprisonment.
A restraining order was also made to last six years, and an order was granted for the forfeiture and destruction of drugs seized by the police.
Jurats Robert Christensen, David Le Heuzé, Alison Opfermann, Michael Entwistle and Michael Berry were sitting.
