Court hears partner admitted to police argument go out of hand

A man strangled and battered his girlfriend to death with a fire extinguisher and told police he was prepared to ‘do the time’, the Old Bailey heard.

Algerian Houssam Djemaa, 23, killed 34-year-old Jacqueline Barrett during a row at her home in Whitefield Avenue, Cricklewood, on December 10 last year.

Paramedics arrived at the flat to find her lying half-naked in the kitchen with severe head injuries.

Djemaa had already told police in a 999 call that the argument ‘just went out of hand’.

He then told the first officer to arrive at the scene: “I killed her. I will do the time.”

The Old Bailey heard Ms Barrett was a mother-of-three and a reformed drug addict living with her youngest son, aged two.

She first met Djemaa in the summer of 2010 and at first their relationship appeared to me a happy one.

But by November her mother Angela noticed that he was controlling and that Jacqueline always seemed to be ‘on edge’, jurors were told.

Duncan Penny, prosecuting, said: “She was aware he had instructed Jacqueline Barrett not to look at or talk to men on Facebook online.”

A week before her death Jacqueline told her mother that Djemaa had hit her or had tried to hit her.

On the day she died at around 3.45am Djemaa approached a friend in the street and told him he had strangled his girlfriend.

Police arrived to find Ms Barrett lying on her back in the kitchen wearing only a t-shirt.

A post mortem revealed she had suffered bruising to the scalp, face, neck, shoulder and shoulders and there was evidence she had been asphyxiated.

Djemaa denies murder but admits manslaughter.

The trial continues.