A STALKER who threatened to kill his ex-partner and her new boyfriend if she refused to leave him warned her "both of you are going under".

Benjamin Stickland bombarded his victim with hundreds of text messages after she walked out on him at the end of last year following a long-term relationship.

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He threatened to “snap every bone” in her new partner’s body, prosecutor Julia Cox said.

Cardiff Crown Court heard how the 36-year-old Stickland, of Forsythia Close, Ty Sign, Risca, became jealous when he found out she was with another man.

Miss Cox said: “The defendant told her to end her new relationship or he would kill himself.

“He also said, ‘I swear on my nan, I’m going to kill him. I’m going to snap every bone in his body'.

“The defendant said he was going to kill her new partner if she didn’t leave him. He bombarded her with death threats towards her new partner.

“He told her, ‘You're next. Both of you are going under.’

“The defendant said that what happened next was not his fault – it was her's. At this point, she was scared for her life.”

Miss Cox said the defendant, who had been held in custody since his arrest at the end of February, had no previous convictions.

He did have one caution for battery against his ex in 2015.

Stickland, who the court heard suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, pleaded guilty to stalking with fear of violence, between January 1 and February 23.

Miss Cox said he had sent around 30 text messages a day to his former partner and also made a number of telephone calls.

Stickland was arrested on Valentine's Day and bailed by police the next day after being told not to contact his ex-lover.

But after his mobile phone was confiscated by officers, he got a new one and resumed his campaign.

Over the next five days he sent a further 142 text messages to her and called her 52 times before being arrested again.

The court heard how the victim had sent an email to prosecutors to say she did not want to see Stickland spend any more time in custody

Jeffrey Jones, mitigating, said his client had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.

He added: “He has had a salutary experience after being locked up in a cell for a large part of the day.”

The judge, Recorder Timothy Brennan QC, told the defendant: “You subjected your former partner to a campaign of stalking and harassment with threats of violence.”

He jailed Stickland for eight months, suspended for two years, and made him the subject of a 20-day rehabilitation activity requirement.

The judge also imposed a five-year restraining order and told the defendant to pay prosecution costs of £340 and a victim surcharge.