A MAN killed his partner with a single punch before leaving as paramedics attempted to revive her, a court heard yesterday.

Prosecutors allege that Daniel Bragg “forcefully” hit Julie Cook at Pokesdown railway station on the afternoon Monday, May 2 this year, causing her to fall and hit her head.

However, the two were able to return to a block of flats in Clarence Park Road before Ms Cook’s condition worsened.

Bragg called for an ambulance shortly after 8pm.

When paramedics arrived, he then left the property and went into Boscombe, it is alleged.

He was arrested outside Bosc Vegas in Christchurch Road just before 1.10am the following day.

On the first day of a trial yesterday, jurors were played recordings of three conversations between Bragg and an operator for the South Western Ambulance Service.

In the first phone call, Bragg said: “I haven’t ******* done anything.

“I haven’t done anything.

“I tell you, I ******* haven’t.”

Later on, he was asked if Ms Cook had been injured in any way.

He replied: “No.”

Simon Jones, prosecuting, said: “That is clearly a lie that we say is told in an attempt for him to help himself.”

In fact, Ms Cook had suffered fractures to her left eye socket and skull, jurors heard.

A Home Office-registered forensic pathologist concluded the cause of her death was “severe blunt force impact” to her head, Mr Jones said.

Bragg provided the police with two signed statements after his arrest.

In the first, written before Ms Cook’s death on the evening of Wednesday, May 4 at Poole Hospital, he said he was “muddled” and in withdrawal.

“I’m in a distressed and confused state,” he said.

In the second statement, which was given to police after he was told that Ms Cook had died, Bragg admitted that the couple had “verbally argued” at the railway station.

“She was drunk and hit me twice about the face,” he wrote.

“She walked away from me.

“I thought the matter was ended but she turned and came towards me again.

“I fended her off and she fell to the ground.”

Mr Jones said: “The issue in this case is whether the defendant acted in self-defence.

“The prosecution say that self-defence simply has no place in this case.

“It’s just not credible.”

The prosecutor said Bragg’s statement about ‘fending off’ Ms Cook is “vague”.

Mr Jones added: “At no stage in these prepared statements is there any acceptance of it being a forceful punch he has clearly struck.”

Bragg, who is 36 and of no fixed abode, denies manslaughter.

The trial, at Winchester Crown Court, continues.