A JILTED lover who repeatedly breached orders protecting his ex from harassment attacked her with a bottle when he saw her in a pub.

Christopher Pinchbeck left the 21-year-old with a wound to the back of her head just five months after a restraining order was imposed.

Two months earlier, he turned up at her home in Guisborough, east Cleveland, and smashed a kitchen window, a court heard yesterday (Monday, April 20).

The order had been imposed last October after 21-year-old Pinchbeck assaulted his former partner and her mother during a drunken rage.

His lawyer, John Nixon, told Teesside Crown Court the couple had been together for four years before they split up a year ago.

He said Pinchbeck's attempts to see his two-year-old son had been "thwarted" by red tape, and it became "a lingering sore".

Judge Peter Bowers was shown closed circuit television footage of the attack in The Priory, Guisborough, late at night on March 14.

It was said Pinchbeck shoved the woman, she punched out at him, and he retaliated with a kick, a punch and throwing a beer bottle.

The victim had little memory of the incident, woke up in an ambulance, and needed seven staples in her wound in hospital.

Mr Nixon said Pinchbeck's recollection was clouded by alcohol and cocaine, but added: "It is obvious words were exchanged."

He said: "When he saw the CCTV from the dock, his words to me were that he was devastated by what he had seen."

Pinchbeck, of Somerset Road, Eston, admitted wounding, damaging property and two breaches of the restraining order.

Jailing him for three years, Judge Bowers told him: "What we see on the CCTV is you throwing a bottle with both force and venom."