A JEALOUS boyfriend throttled his partner and garrotted her with a jacket after accusing her of having an affair.

The woman stopped breathing several times during the attack at the home they shared in Stockton, a court was told.

Anthony Russell was yesterday jailed for 12 months for what a judge said was a "truly terrifying" assault last month.

Russell, 28, also tried to smother the woman with a cushion and held a knife to her throat while threatening to kill her.

The mum-of-two said in a statement, read at Teesside Crown Court: "I genuinely believed that he was going to kill me."

She said: "We need to separate for good... I believe if I stay with him, he will hurt me in the future, or even worse."

The court heard how trouble flared when Russell returned home drunk in the early hours of November 1 as his partner slept.

He accused the woman of having an affair, demanded her mobile phone and asked for the password so he could look at messages.

He then pulled her by the ankles from her bed, shoved her as she went down the stairs, and squeezed her throat in the front room.

Prosecutor David Crook told Judge Michael Taylor yesterday that the couple's children - aged five and three - were at home.

The brute - with convictions for violence in 2003 and 2006 - left her with scratches and bruises to her nose and cheek and a sore jaw.

Duncan McReddie, mitigating, told the court that Russell had kept out of trouble for five years and managed to find regular work.

"On this occasion, he drank far too heavily," said Mr McReddie. "He is a man who does not normally drink.

"He knows he needs help and he knows he cannot behave in a way as to repeat this episode."

Judge Taylor also imposed a restraining order to ban Russell, of Appleton Road, Stockton, from going near his ex.