A drunken man who kicked and punched his eight-and-a-half-months pregnant girlfriend in the stomach has been jailed.

Jason Leeming also grabbed Samantha Weston by the throat and threatened to stab her with a kitchen knife, yanked out her hair, and dragged her along the floor and tried to shut her head in a door, Bradford Crown Court was told yesterday.

Jailing him for 12 months, Judge John Potter told Leeming: “This was a disgraceful piece of behaviour towards a particularly vulnerable victim in the sanctity of her own home.”

Prosecutor David Ward said mother-of-three Miss Weston was Leeming’s on-off partner. Three weeks before the incident, he had been given a police caution for breaking a door at her home in Silverdale Road, West Bowling.

Mr Ward said Leeming returned drunk to the house in the early hours of November 26 last year and there was a confrontation with his girlfriend.

The prosecutor said Leeming, 26, took a knife from the kitchen and held it to her and she feared she was going to be stabbed.

He banged her head against the door and she threw herself on the floor, where she was kicked five times in the stomach. Leeming also tried to force her head between a door and its frame and slam the door on it. Miss Weston went to hospital after the attack and was released after treatment.

Philip Ainge, mitigating, said her baby was born safely on December 16 and Leeming had been present, at the invitation of her family.

He said Leeming, who pleaded guilty to causing actual bodily harm, was thoroughly and deeply ashamed and had resolved to address his problems with drinking and domestic violence.

Judge Potter said he accepted Leeming, of Silverdale Road, had expressed a degree of remorse, made admissions to police and entered a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity.

But he added: “This was a sustained incident of domestic violence within a relationship characterised by that behaviour by you towards her. The appropriate sentence must be immediate custody.”

He also granted a restraining order, preventing Leeming having contact with Miss Weston.