A CONVICTED robber slapped his ex-girlfriend in the head at her Carlisle home.

Martin Forster, 27, turned up at Kyra Marie Hebson’s city address in an “intoxicated” state on November 16.

Forster walked straight into her property, prosecutor Julian Goode told Carlisle Crown Court. As he entered the kitchen, “mumbling” words which included a crude insult, Miss Hebson went to the front door.

“The defendant came over and slapped her to the left side of her head and ear,” said Mr Goode.

“This was a slap with an open hand. It was fingers and the upper part which struck her. She suffered soreness as a result of that strike for a period of about one hour.”

Police were alerted and, when interviewed, Forster denied the offence.

Miss Hebson had provided a victim impact statement. “She describes the defendant as being unpredictable,” said Mr Goode, “having never seen him act in that manner before. She states that the assault has caused her to become distressed.”

Forster, previously of Lowther Street, Carlisle, admitted common assault. He was said to have 51 offences on his criminal record, including a robbery and a burglary, committed in 2014, for which he‘d received a seven-year total prison sentence.

He‘d since been recalled to prison on licence, and was due to appear before a parole board later this month for an assessment of whether he could be managed in the community.

Brendan Burke, defending, asked for any assault sentence to be limited to “weeks if not days”. It was “plausible”, said Mr Burke, that Forster could be spending the next 22 months in custody in any event.

Imposing a 14-day jail term, Recorder Richard Archer told Forster of his offending against Miss Hebson: “Clearly it must have been at the forefront of her mind the question of just what you were quite capable of doing, and what you might have done.”