77-year-old man accused of strangling woman on their first date

 A US man strangled his much younger date after they met in person for the first time, police have said.

Alan Richard Schmitt, 77, was arrested at the home of a 23-year-old woman in Virginia after she called police.

The pair had met on online dating website Plenty of Fish, and the evening of his arrest was their first date. 

WAVY.com reports that the woman turned Schmitt down when she realised he was much older than she thought, but he convinced her to go to a shopping mall with him. A police report says that he bought $400 USD of clothes for her, before they returned to her home together.

Later in the evening, he allegedly demanded she return all of the items he had bought, including a shirt she was wearing. 

According to the criminal complaint, “she told him he could not have the shirt back,” at which point “he grabbed her around the neck... he then threw her to the ground.”

He then allegedly “got on top of her” and “proceeded to choke her, causing her to struggle to breathe.”

An officer wrote in the complaint that “I observed her necklaces were in pieces, and there were small bleeding scratches around her neck.”

Schmitt alleges that the pair began to argue when he tried to get his clothes back, and was “unsure about how she ended up on the ground”. 

He has been charged with felony strangling of another causing wounds or injury and is scheduled to return to court on November 14.