A man who was told to leave his ex-partner’s flat following a failed reconciliation bid, left a fire-raising parting shot, a court was told.

James Wheatley-Taylor previously smashed windows at the victim’s ground-floor flat in Hartlepool and strangled her, leaving her gasping for breath, in past episodes in their tempestuous, on-off relationship, which began in July last year.

But having ended the relationship, she agreed to give the defendant another chance to rekindle the romance, in sympathy, after he told her he had entered a rail line considering a suicide attempt.

Shaun Dryden, prosecuting, told a judge sitting at Grimsby Crown Court, hearing Durham and Teesside cases, that on April 25 this year the couple attended a house party in Billingham.

James Wheatley-Taylor jailed for a t

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