An abusive partner has been jailed for attacking his girlfriend with a bottle in a public park as a group of young footballers were playing just yards away.

The teenaged players stopped their game and ran over to intervene when they saw Peter Bonnet (pictured) lashing out with the bottle in Bitton Park, Teignmouth.

Bonnet had been handed a suspended sentence just two weeks before for an earlier attack on the same vulnerable partner, Exeter Crown Court was told.

He was supposed to be working with the probation service to address his domestic violence but attacked his partner before he attended the first session.

Bonnet, aged 32, of Coombe Vale Road, Teignmouth, admitted causing actual bodily harm on his partner, common assault on one of the footballers, and breaching the suspended sentence.

He was jailed for a total of 21 months by Recorder Mr Andrew Oldland, who told him: ‘You were both in drink and you were so abusive that a group of teenagers became concerned about the woman’s safety.

‘You hit her with a bottle and it is fortunate for you it did not break. You then turned on one of the teenagers and you yourself were punched.

‘There is a pattern of domestic abuse here. This was just two weeks after you received a suspended sentence for offences which were also committed in drink.’

Mr David Bowen, prosecuting, said police were called to the park on June 22 last year by teenagers who saw Bonnet attacking a woman.

They intervened for the first time when he knocked her down during an argument. They tried to distract him by inviting him to join their football game but he only kicked a couple of balls before resuming the attack.

Mr Bowen said: ‘This time he was seen to pick up an empty wine bottle which he held by the neck and swung into the woman’s head, hitting her twice and bruising her temple and eye.’

The footballers intervened again and one of them punched Bonnet in self-defence. They held him until police arrived.

Bonnet had been made subject of a four-month suspended sentence by magistrates exactly two weeks earlier for punching and kicking the same victim and pulling the hair of a friend who tried to stop him.

Mr William Parkhill, mitigating, said Bonnet’s problems arose from the abuse of alcohol. He has accepted his relationship with the woman is over and plans to start a new life with help from the Brunel Manor Christian Centre in Torbay.

He said Bonnet was supposed to have received help from the probation service as part of his suspended sentence but it had not started by the time of this offence.