Man who strangled woman on camping trip jailed

35-year-old also handed a Domestic Abuse Prevention Order

Report by BBC Isle of Man:

A man who punched and strangled his then partner until she blacked while out on a camping trip has been jailed for three years.

Shaun Bignell, 35, attacked the woman after an argument broke out at the Point of Ayre on 17 August.

Douglas Courthouse heard the victim had tried to escape by driving her van away but got stuck in the sand and was caught by Bignell.

After she drove to Ramsey, with him in the vehicle, he told her her 'son won't have a mother' if she got out.

The court heard as the victim tried to get away Bignell, of Close Ollay in Ramsey, smashed the van's windscreen and chased after her as she ran towards the town's fire station.

As she tried to call the police he took her mobile phone off her and threw it at the building's window; Bignall was arrested outside the former Ramsey Bakery building opposite.

In a victim impact statement, read to the court, the woman said she did not feel she could 'ever trust again' and that she had now become 'distrustful of people I have known for years'.

She said she had started having nightmares and felt 'detached and distant from life itself'.

"I no longer find joy in anything," she added.

Douglas Courthouse heard Bignell was out on licence after a previous jail term and had been on court bail at the time of the attack for assaulting a police officer in May after he rugby tackled the officer when being arrested for a separate offence.

He pleaded guilty to domestic abuse, two counts of criminal damage, and assaulting a police officer.

Bignell was placed on a Domestic Abuse Prevention Order, which bans him from contacting, harassing or inciting violence against the victim indefinitely, and had his licence condition extended by two years.