A FINANCIAL trader has been jailed in Peru for pushing his pregnant girlfriend out of a window to her death.

Owen Goddard, from Benson, near Wallingford, also fell from the third-floor apartment but was this week convicted of aggravated homicide at a court in the country’s capital Lima.

Oxford Mail:

Owen Goddard pictured being arrested in Peru

He was sentenced to 20 years behind bars and ordered to pay damages of £42,500 to his partner’s family.

Peru-born Goddard, 35, previously of Littleworth Road, Benson, had been living with his Peruvian girlfriend Lidia Maribel Mendoza Riquez for a year and three months before the fatal fall in February 2012.

He was hospitalised after he was found lying on wooden railings close to his partner’s body. But he was arrested eight days later by local police.

The South American trial heard Goddard’s girlfriend was nearly four months pregnant when he pushed her out of the window of the apartment they shared in Lima.

The court also heard that Goddard had acted violently before the fatal fall.

Judges ruled that Goddard was not suffering from any psychiatric problems when he committed the crime.

Prosecutors had called for a 30-year jail sentence and more than double the amount of compensation Goddard was ordered to pay.

They are now expected to appeal for a stricter sentence.

Yesterday Benson villagers spoke of their shock at Goddard’s crime.

Keith Evans, 71, of Oxford Road, said: “He got his just desserts by the sound of it. It’s shocking. He sounds like a nasty piece of work. You wonder why he would do that. It is a terrible thing to do.”

Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: “I used to see him when I was walking by because he would be working on his mother’s house and used to do a good job of it. I was very surprised to hear it was him who did it.

“Not a lot of people know the family, or what happened because it has been kept pretty quiet.”

Goddard avoided jail in 2007 after he admitted being drunk and swearing at passengers on an aeroplane.

He mixed Valium and alcohol before boarding a flight from Bangkok to Heathrow.

He was given a 12-month community order, 12 months psychiatric care and ordered to 80 hours community work.

Peruvian judges also ruled an unnamed man who was in the flat should be investigated over claims he may have acted as an accomplice.