A THUG who avoided jail after kicking his girlfriend repeatedly in the head has again been spared prison after assaulting her.

Thomas Noble, of Alice Smith Square, Littlemore, Oxford, was handed a community penalty in April last year for an attack on Johanna Beerman, the mother of his two-year-old son.

On that occasion prosecutor Tim Boswell said the 21-year-old told his drunk girlfriend to get up off the ground and, when she did not, he kicked her “four or five times” in the head.

That offence breached an earlier 10-month suspended sentence for an assault with intent to rob he carried out on January 23, 2012.

Sentencing him last year Judge Gordon Risius told the 21-year-old he would be shown no mercy next time he appeared before the court.

But this week Recorder Jim Tindal handed Noble another suspended sentence for dragging Miss Beerman out of a car, driving while disqualified and possessing cannabis on March 12 this year.

Claire Fraser, defending, said the assault was prompted by Miss Beerman leaving her client suddenly after a four-and-a-half-year relationship.

She said: “He completely acknowledges that he should not have acted in the way that he did.

“He accepts that when he pulled her from the car she went down to the ground. The reason for doing so was to ask why she had ended their relationship and how he would get access to their son.”

Recorder Tindal said he had been close to sending Noble to prison, but decided not to because he had found himself a job at the BMW plant in Cowley and had partially complied with the community order.

He told him: “For a young man you have a substantial record of different kinds of offending – violence, very many driving offences, drugs offences and non-compliance with court orders.”

Recorder Tindal sentenced him to a 20-week suspended sentence, with 100 hours of unpaid work, £350 costs and a six-week curfew.

Noble has received more than 27 convictions for 70 offences since 2002.

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