A SPURNED lover was jailed today for more than five years for throttling his girlfriend with a silk scarf.

Bao Chen, 45, a Chinese national of Leyton High Road, was rejected by the woman he wanted to marry and in a moment of “uncontrolled panic”, tightened the scarf she was wearing around her neck until she turned purple and passed out, the court heard.

As 27-year-old Li Na Guo was passing out, Chen told her, “I don’t want you to leave me”, the court heard.

At the Old Bailey today, Gopal Hooper, prosecuting, told the court that Chen, who had lived in the UK for ten years, had befriended Miss Guo over three months and intended to marry her when they returned to China.

But at his Leyton flat on October 9 last year, Chen reacted with fury when she told him they would not be travelling home together.

Mr Hooper said: “This may be the reason he did what he did next. He took the scarf and said, ‘would you believe that I would kill you’.

“She thought he was joking. But he playfully tugged at it, then pulled it with such ferocity that she lost consciousness.”

When the victim awoke she managed to escape out of his second-floor flat window onto a flat roof and slid down a drain pipe and fell onto the pavement below. Passerbys found her and called an ambulance and the police.

The consultant who treated her described her injuries of a purple and swollen face, bulging eyes, bleeding under her skin and blood in the whites of her eyes, as being consistent with someone who had suffered “severe, life-threatening strangulation”.

The court heard that when the police traced Chen later that evening, he immediately confessed, telling the officers “Me, me, I did it.”

Tarquin McCalla, defending, said: “He acted in a moment of uncontrolled panic. It was a shock to him the severity of his injuries.

“He didn’t want to leave her and told her that if she had died, he would have followed her by taking pills.”

Sentencing Chen at the Old Bailey today to five years and four months for grievous bodily harm with intent, Judge Paul Focke QC, told him: “She sustained a terrifying and life-threatening ordeal that day and one which may well have serious long-term psychological effects on her.

“It must have been plain to you that she was sustaining significant injuries and you failed to seek medical help for her.

“It is of the opinion of the probation officer that you pose a high risk of harm to the public in the future.”

The court heard that Chen, who pleaded guilty, was of previous good character with no convictions.