On a first date it's best not to turn up drunk, or claim you are "dangerous", or fight with police, or feign unconsciousness.
But 36-year-old Jeremy Ivan Sutton took an unconventional approach to the situation on November 2, the Dunedin District Court heard yesterday.
The Roxburgh man had met a woman through the dating app Tinder two weeks before the bizarre incident and made the near-two-hour drive from his home in Central Otago to the woman's house in Mosgiel to meet her for the first time.
But it was not flowers and chocolates he arrived with that evening.
Sutton, court documents said, "appeared intoxicated" and told the woman he had been in a car crash earlier that day.
The woman - who was at the house with her 9-year-old son - asked the defendant to leave as he consumed more alcohol.
Sutton refused.
He told the woman "he could be dangerous" and "was not to be mucked around with".
Sutton himself called 111 but hung up before the circumstances could be established.
As a result officers were dispatched to the house where they were met by the victim and her "hysterical" son.
Police found Sutton sitting in the lounge beside a large kitchen knife.
He claimed the woman had held it to his throat and threatened him, then he called 111 again to tell them he was being harassed by police.
When one constable asked Sutton to leave the address, the man confronted him with clenched fists.
The defendant's anger was soon redirected when a second constable interjected.
Sutton walked quickly to the officer, punched him in the face and pulled his rain jacket over his head.
When he was wrestled into submission and handcuffed by the pair, the defendant pretended to be unconscious.
An ambulance was called out of caution but Sutton's unruly behaviour continued at Dunedin Hospital, where
he refused to be treated and "subjected the doctor to a loud torrent of expletive-laden abuse".
Sutton had to be dragged through the emergency department by police as he continued the stream of obscenities.
Defence counsel Meg Scally said her client had abstained since the incident and had recently joined the Roxburgh Baptist Church, which had run a bible-studies class from his house so he could comply with his curfew while on bail.
Judge Michael Turner said much of Sutton's eight pages of criminal history were attributable to alcohol abuse.
He was sentenced to three months' community detention, nine months' intensive supervision and ordered to pay the victim $500.
