A MAN who killed his partner with a single punch before running away as paramedics tried to save her life has been jailed. 

Daniel Bragg punched Julie Cook in the face at Pokesdown railway station on the afternoon of Monday, May 2 this year after a row.

Ms Cook fell backwards without breaking her fall, hitting her head on the ground.

Although she was briefly unconscious, she then came round, and Bragg was able to take her out of the station before she collapsed again.

The defendant took Ms Cook to the communal living room of a property in Clarence Park Road, where her condition worsened.

Bragg called for an ambulance shortly after 8pm.

When paramedics arrived, he left his partner of four years and went into Boscombe.

He was arrested outside Bosc Vegas at around 1.10am the following day.

Ms Cook died at Poole Hospital on Wednesday, May 4.

She had suffered fractures to an eye socket and her skull.

Bragg refused to answer police questions about the attack, instead providing a written statement to say he had acted in self-defence after Ms Cook hit him twice in the face.

Prosecutor Simon Jones said the statement was "just not credible".

Bragg, 37 and of no fixed abode, had denied manslaughter.

However, on the second day of a trial at Winchester Crown Court, he changed his plea, accepting the charge against him.

He was sentenced this afternoon as members of Ms Cook's family sat on the press bench to look him in the eye.

The victim's mother Jean said she has been "swamped with the reality and depth of the heartache".

"We will always wonder what may have been if she had been given the chance of medical care sooner, but she was denied that," she added.

A letter Bragg had written to the judge was also read aloud to the court.

He called Ms Cook's death a "massive, terrible accident".

"She was, and remains, a perfect lady," the letter read.

Bragg was the subject of a domestic violence protection order at the time of Ms Cook's death.

The order did not follow a conviction, but was put in place after police raised concerns for the victim, the court heard.

He was also handed a caution for the offence of battery against Ms Cook in 2013 and in 2015 was sentenced to a conditional discharge after being convicted of being drunk and disorderly and two counts of possessing class A drugs.

Judge Jane Miller QC sentenced Bragg to five years and four months behind bars.