A jealous boyfriend has been jailed after he subjected his partner to a brutal attack as she was trapped inside a caravan.

Ethan Knight accused his girlfriend of seeing someone else after grabbing her phone and scrolling through her messages and he smashed a double glazed window before pinning her to a bed and punching her in the face repeatedly.

The victim thought she was going to die as he held his hands around the throat and she struggled to breath during the attack in at Petrockstowe, near Okehampton last November.

Knight started a relationship with the woman after being released part way through a jail sentence imposed earlier last year for threatening a shop assistant with a knife at Tesco in Lyme Regis.

He was also on bail for a string of burglaries which he was alleged to have committed in and around Weymouth after his release.

Knight, aged 27, formerly of Kingsway, Lyme Regis, but now of no fixed address, admitted assault causing actual bodily harm and was jailed for a year and two months by Judge Peter Johnson at Exeter Crown Curt.

He told him: “You lost your temper and threw something through the window. She clearly was not happy with your conduct and after you punched her, she picked up a knife to protect herself.

“You punched her again and ended up pinning her down and punching her repeatedly in the face, four times or more, leaving her with black eyes, swollen cheeks and with a bruise on her neck.

“She described a sense of helplessness. She said she had never felt so scared in her life and feared you would kill her. This was in her home and you had only recently been released from prison.

“She was extremely vulnerable because she was in a small caravan with nowhere to go. You showed persistence in the attack and she suffered physical injuries.”

The judge made a five-year restraining order banning any contact with the victim.

Mr Herc Ashworth, said the attack happened on November 21 at a caravan at Easter Hall Park, at Petrockstowe, near Okehampton, and left the woman battered and terrified.

Miss Kelly Scrivener, defending, said a more serious charge of strangulation had been dropped. She said Knight has been diagnosed with adult attention deficit hyperactive disorder but is still on a waiting list for treatment.