A Carlisle man threatened to murder his partner during a relationship marred by his violence and coercive conduct.

The city’s crown court heard how Dionne Winthrop was “roughly handled and assaulted with frequency” by Michael Karl Celmins while they were together for several months last year.

On one occasion, after 29-year-old Celmins was quizzed about his phone use, he pinned Miss Winthrop down with his legs, put his hands around her throat and face, and gouged her eyes.

On another, he took a bottle of ammonia he kept in his home in case of intruders, and threatened to tip the contents over her. He’d said “watch this, no one will want you now”, and told her: “I’ll murder you.”

Celmins threatened her family so she wouldn’t report his criminal conduct. However, she eventually plucked up the courage to tell police what had gone on, giving painstaking detail of a relationship she described as “horrible, disgusting”.

“She was left fearful,” prosecutor Charlotte Kenny said of the impact of Celmins’s bad behaviour on Miss Winthrop.

“Asked why she hadn’t got medical treatment, she said this: ‘I wasn’t allowed.’”

Eventually she took photos of her own injuries to document his offending.

Celmins initially denied using controlling or coercive behaviour towards Miss Winthrop but changed his plea to guilty on day two of his trial last month.

He also admitted assaulting her friend, Sarah Clayton, by grabbing her in a head-lock during a van journey, and threatening her with a knife; and illegally possessing CS spray at his house.

The court heard Celmins had a previous conviction for assaulting a different partner, whom he punched several times during a violent incident which left her “terrified”.

Celmins, of Reeth Road, Carlisle, was said by Zoe Dawson, defending, to have suffered from mental health problems and struggled to come to terms with a number of family bereavements.

“The defendant accepts his guilt for this offending,” insisted Miss Dawson, “and would wish me to reiterate he does accept that.”

Celmins was jailed for 38 months by Judge James Adkin.