Pregnant woman slapped, dragged during attack

A FUSE lit in a Toowoomba man sent him into a fit of rage that saw him slap, punch and drag his pregnant partner on the floor in a sustained domestic violence attack.

The grim account of the incident was revealed in the Toowoomba District Court yesterday where a 25-year-old man who cannot be named - pleaded guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm and wilful damage. He was released on parole, and his barrister David Jones submitted that drugs had played a pivotal part in the man’s life.

Mr Jones said they “lit a fuse” in him that triggered fits of rage when he was under cannabis and methylamphetamine.

A fuse, the court heard, that was ignited last year after an argument that turned violent and left the woman bruised and bloody.

“You slapped her to the face, you dragged her off a bed and into a hallway,” Judge Anthony Rafter said.

“You then punched her in the face.

“Intoxication is not a mitigating factor.”

But he was not done there. The man then hurled a can of coke in the direction of the mother of his unborn child, missing her, but breaking an ornament that belonged to the woman’s father.

“Your conduct in assaulting a pregnant woman, with whom you had a relationship, is quite despicable,” Judge Rafter said.

The Toowoomba man was given six months jail, but released on immediate parole yesterday.