A MAN who smashed his former partner's front door into her as he dropped of their child has been given a suspended sentence.

Benjamin Grimston reacted angrily when he believed that his former lover had failed to get their daughter inoculated – a concern that was unfounded, Teesside Crown Court heard.

The 43-year-old sent the woman flying when he forced her door open, causing an injury to her hand, before twice more attempting to use the door to hit her.

Shada Mellor, prosecuting, said Grimston launched a tirade of abuse before violently slamming the door into his victim.

She said: "The defendant began shouting at her and making threats the the GP was going to report her to social services for not taking her daughter for her pre-school inoculation – this was not the case at all.

"She tried to close the door but the defendant wouldn't allow her, she told him to **** off, he then lunged forward with both of his hands to push open the door. The door hit her with force and she fell to the floor, her thumb got stuck in the door handle and bent backwards and during the fall a mirror was also knocked off the wall."

Miss Mellor told the court that there were two children in the house at the time of the incident and saw their mother laid on the floor with one child shouting 'get off my mammy'.

The child was described as 'screaming and hysterical' when she ran her aunt's nearby home.

Grimston, of Raby Road, Hartlepool, was found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm following a trial at Teesside Magistrates' Court.

Martin Scarborough, in mitigation, said his client fully accepts his conviction and understands that he will be sentenced on the account of his former partner despite standing by his own account of what happened in April last year.

Judge Recorder Jeremy Hill-Baker sentenced Grimston to 21 months in prison suspended for two years. He said: "You behaved in a wholly unacceptable way when you were visiting the home of your former partner."