A BURGLAR smothered his girlfriend until she couldn’t breathe during a fight in a car, York Crown Court heard.

Reece Callum Davidson, 25, was under police investigation at the time for two house burglaries, during one of which a woman was hit in the face with a torch while she lay in bed.

He has now been given three prison sentences this year totalling more than eight years at two different courts.

Davidson, of Carr Lane, Acomb, pleaded guilty to suffocation and breaching a non-molestation order forbidding him from associating with his girlfriend.

The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, said those who attacked partners protected by orders from the court must expect consecutive sentences to any they were already serving.

He sentenced Davidson to eight months in prison, to be served after the 51 months he was given at York Crown Court in February this year for burglary and 48 months at Hull Crown Court in April for burglary. The two burglary sentences are concurrent to each other, meaning they run together rather than one after the other.

Davidson was also made subject to a five-year restraining order to protect the girlfriend.

Harry Crowson, prosecuting, said the girlfriend had got a non-molestation order against Davidson at York Family Court in July 2021 but the pair had got together again.

The order was still in force when the couple spent the evening of June 15, 2022, together drinking, and in the early hours of the next morning they were in a car when they started arguing and fighting.

Davidson put his hand over her nose and mouth “with such force she couldn’t breathe,” said Mr Crowson.

“The defendant said to her, ‘Are you going to stop screaming?’ This happened on more than one occasion as she tried to squirm and wriggle.”

The girlfriend suffered bruises to her face and neck and had a bite mark on her hand.

Rachel Webster, for Davidson, said: “It was a fight between the two partners where the defendant was trying to keep the complainant from shouting and screaming. The defendant was attacked.”

He suffered several scratches.

“He genuinely regrets his actions,” she said.

She claimed the girlfriend was constantly asking Davidson’s grandmother when he would be released from prison.

In February, York Crown Court heard that Davidson was one of two burglars who broke into a house in Norton at night in October 2021.

During the raid, one of them hit a woman in bed with a torch and a car on the driveway outside belonging to the woman’s son was stolen. Davidson was sentenced on the basis it was a joint enterprise.

Mr Crowson told Judge Morris that the burglary for which Davidson was sentenced at Hull Crown Court was “very similar” in that Davidson and at least one other person broke into a person’s home in December 2020 and stole two cars.