A LLECHRYD man who admitted assaulting his former partner has said ill-health had led to the couple both becoming frustrated.

Robert Leslie Briggs, 54, pleaded guilty to assaulting Marjorie Sanders on 2 January after the couple started arguing about which lights should be on in their home.

Prosecutor Kevin Challinor said police were called to the couple’s home in the early hours of 2 January after Ms Sanders reported that she had been assaulted.

He said the couple had started arguing after Ms Sanders had put the main lights on in the house and Briggs, now living at Maes yr Haf, said he didn’t want the bright lights on.

After a while the argument escalated and moved on to other topics, but they kept arguing before Briggs ran toward Ms Sanders, knocking Christmas cards off a cabinet.

He shouted at Ms Sanders that she shouldn’t “answer him back” and that she’d be “sorry”, before he picked up a cushion and started hitting her with it.

Ms Sanders told police that although Briggs was using a cushion, the blows were quite hard and she then put her hand up to ward off blows, but her thumb got caught on the cushion and she told him to stop. Briggs though said: “I don’t care about you or your thumb” and continued to hit her causing an injury to Ms Sanders’s thumb, the court was told.

She needed an X-ray at Withybush hospital and was diagnosed as having strained ligaments in her thumb, which was swollen.

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