A VIOLENT thug who terrorised his sometime partner and their child at their home has been jailed for three-a-half years.

Neil Perry was described by a judge as having gone berserk and also likened to a psychopath as a result of his behaviour.

The 33-year-old choked the woman by grabbing her arm and pulling it over her shoulder, doing so with such force that she lost consciousness.

Perry also dragged the victim up the stairs by her hair and with a knife tucked in his pocket told her: “I may as well kill you”.

Robin Turton, prosecuting at Teesside Crown Court, said the fracas on May 22 this year disturbed the couple’s young child, who was asleep, and tried to run to a neighbour’s for help.

But Perry, who also used a knife to cut the phone line in the property and also hid the victim’s keys, grabbed the child and also punched the woman in the stomach.

Then, bizarrely, he suggested all three should go to bed for a cuddle.

Perry’s brother at this point arrived to pick up the child and take her to school, while the woman fled to a specially built safe room in the house with a reinforced door.

However that failed to stop the defendant who crashed through a ceiling “like a man possessed” from a loft space above the room, again grabbing and threatening her.

The woman eventually managed to get out by making an excuse that she needed to go to the shops and the police were called.

When Perry, of Hornby Close, Stockton, was arrested he told police he had choked the victim, but “definitely did not slap her as she would have no head left”.

His barrister Duncan McReddie said: “He had heard rumours about her [the victim’s] behaviour and inflamed his state of mind with drugs and alcohol.”

Mr McReddie said the matter passed the custody threshold by some distance, although he tried to suggest any jail sentence could be suspended.

He also said Perry was intending to move away from the area so he would not be near the victim.

The defendant, who was made subject to an indefinite restraining order in respect of the victim, admitted false imprisonment, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and making threats to kill.

Judge Sean Morris said Perry was a large well built, powerful man who enjoyed beating women and had belittled his victim.

He also said he behaved like a berserk criminal in front of his own child.

The judge said: “The ordeal was horrendous. You imprisoned her [the victim] in the house so you could take pleasure in abusing her physically.”

Perry, who was said to have his own business, was jailed for three and-a-half years.