A drunken bully smashed a metal lampshade over his partner, breaking her arm, during an argument at her flat in York.
Stuart Reid, 43, from Heworth, struck the victim so hard with the copper lamp it snapped and left her in agony, York Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Laura Addy said the victim was in bed at the time of the attack.
She tried to ring police, but her phone had run out of power. “She had to go to her neighbours, leaving (Reid) in the flat,” said Ms Addy.
Police arrived on the scene and arrested Reid, who was bailed and issued with a domestic-violence protection notice.
The victim suffered a fracture and cuts to her arm. She underwent surgery to have plates fitted to her arm and had to be signed off work for six weeks.
Barely a few days after being bailed, Reid sneaked back into her flat. She woke when it was still dark to find him on the living-room sofa, apparently asleep.
“She told him to leave,” said Ms Addy. “He told her he had nowhere to go.”
Later that same morning, police went to take a statement from him about the incident, but he still had the gall to return to the victim’s flat, “pressing his face up” against the door between the entrance and living room. He left only when she called police.
That incident put Reid in breach of the domestic-violence protection notice, for which he received a two-month prison sentence in December last year.
He was charged with wounding with intent in relation to the attack with the bedside lamp but denied the allegation. He was due to face trial this week but pleaded guilty at the last minute to an alternative charge of wounding without intent.
The attack occurred in the early hours of December 8.
‘Nasty assault’
Reid, of Harcourt Street, appeared for sentence via video link on Friday.
The court heard that he and the victim had been in a “toxic” relationship for about four years and had a child together. The fraught relationship was “exacerbated by (Reid’s) drinking”.
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Ms Addy said that on the night in question, Reid was drinking and watching football on TV.
“(The victim) told him she had had enough and he had to leave,” she added. “He said he would only go on his terms.”
Reid had eight previous convictions including battery and breaching a domestic-violence protection order in 2019 against the same victim.
Ms Addy said the victim had struggled to sleep since the attack and had been prescribed painkillers.
Andrew Petterson, mitigating, said that Reid, a labourer, had a drink problem but was otherwise a hard-working man
Judge Sean Morris, the Recorder of York, described the attack as a “nasty assault” which had left the victim with a “grave” injury.
He slammed Reid for “snooping around” the victim’s flat even after she told him not to come back and for having the brass neck to “brazen it out” with denials until the day of trial.
He told Reid: “You think you have some sort of right to be with this woman, when you don’t, and you are characteristic of the kind of man that hits women.
“You don’t own this human being. Her Christmas must have been ruined.”
Reid was jailed for two years and given a seven-year restraining order which bans him contacting the victim or going anywhere near her home.