A Tinder user said she felt 'unsafe for months' after a man she'd matched with broke into her home, put tinned spaghetti in her shoes and cut through electrical cords.
Alisha Moy matched with 21-year-old Jordan Cobbold on the dating app after moving into her first flat, in Ipswich, Suffolk, in January last year.
The 20-year-old was looking for a long-term relationship and decided to meet up with Cobbold after the pair chatted for a while.
Alisha invited Jordan to come to her home and after seeing each other for a couple of weeks he suggested taking the spare key to her flat, claiming it would be 'nice if he let himself in' while Alisha was at work.
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Alisha said she 'didn't really get the chance to say no', and the fact Jordan had a key played on her mind so much she ended up calling her mum to express her fears.
Despite initially being 'attracted' to Jordan, Alisha said soon 'things turned weird', describing how Jordan would 'burst into tears for no reason' while watching a film and 'ignore' Alisha when she asked what was wrong.
“Then, when we got together, he started saying stuff like ‘this is the stage of the relationship when everything starts going wrong’. We’d only been seeing each other a matter of weeks! It was so confusing, I couldn’t understand why he was being so intense and needy," Alisha said.
The 20-year-old decided to end the relationship, after which Jordan blocked her from contacting him. Assuming that was the end of it, Alisha was shocked to come home the next day and find the chaos Jordan had caused in her home.
She recalled: "I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked in the hallway – I usually leave all the interior doors open, but someone had closed them all. I opened my living room door and just burst into tears at the sight in front of me."
While she was at work, Jordan had taken Alisha's shoes out of the cloakroom and 'poured beans and spaghetti in there', as well as splattering condiments all over the walls, pouring cooking sauce on her vacuum cleaner and cutting the cables for her new kitchen appliances.
“I’d had some money from my dad for my birthday a few days earlier and spent it on new appliances. Leads for the kettle, microwave and coffee maker had been cut through. They’d literally only been in there for a day. I hadn’t even used the microwave. The fridge freezer had been turned off and cooking oil poured all over the place.”
Jordan didn't stop there, and also trashed Alisha's make-up and poured shower gel into her drawers.
Alisha's mum called the police and a forensic team arrived to examine the flat, after which Jordan was arrested. He pleaded guilty to criminal damage and one count of burglary after he took a necklace that he had given Alisha on her birthday. He was sentenced to a two-year community order, with 30 rehabilitation activity days and 180 hours of unpaid work.
Jordan was also ordered to pay Alisha £1,750 in compensation and £425 in court costs, and was given a five-year restraining order.
It took Alisha a day and a half to clean up her flat and she was forced to repaint a number of walls as well as have her carpets professionally cleaned.
The damage caused by Jordan’s spree was estimated at almost £1520, with Alisha describing the ordeal as 'heartbreaking'.
“It took months before I felt safe again," she said.
In the wake of the events, Alisha deleted Tinder and has since met someone new.
Topics: Tinder, Sex and Relationships, UK News, Crime
Emily Brown