A HAMPSHIRE policewoman has told how she woke in the night to find her lover sat astride her and trying to strangle her.

Inspector Sara Glen thought she had died when everything went black and quiet after she struggled to breathe following the attack at her New Forest flat.

Bristol Crown Court heard how the police officer was close to death but regained consciousness "by an ironic twist of fate" following the premeditated and determined assault at the hands of Tina Nash, with whom she had had an intimate relationship for just over a year.

After the incident, Miss Glen, who was then a detective sergeant based at Southampton Central CID, ignored her own predicament and dialled 999 after being told her girlfriend had taken 32 paracetomal tablets.

Miss Glen, now based at Eastleigh, described how she had woken as she was pushed onto her back in bed at her Bartley flat last March.

"I felt Tina's weight on top of me, a ligature going onto my throat and being held very, very tight," she said.

"Her knees were on either side of me. The duvet was between us. I could not move my arms. The ligature just got tighter and tighter around my neck.

"I said 'what are you doing? I love you'. because I thought it would stop her but it just got tighter and then I could not breath."

Visibly trembling and fighting back tears, Miss Glen, 31, added: "I remember thinking I was going to die and there was nothing I could do.

"I could not get any oxygen into my lungs. I remember it going black and very quiet and thinking: 'This is what it feels like to be dead'."

Miss Glen, who has been in the police service for ten years, said she had been paralysed when she regained consciousness. After slowly regaining her mobility, she asked Nash what she had done, jurors heard.

Nash, who was then a serving police sergeant based at Bitterne, is alleged to have replied: "I was going to kill you, get arrested and die in the police cells."

Miss Glen told the court she went into "work mode" after being told Nash, who wrongly believed her lover was having an affair, had taken an overdose. Miss Glen then dialled 999 for help.

But Miss Glen hid in the bathroom when paramedics arrived at the flat and was reluctant to receive hospital treatment herself until persuaded by a friend, it was alleged.

Under cross-examination, Miss Glen admitted that she had not wanted her former partner to be put through the court process, saying: "Initially I was torn between my loyalties to an ex-partner and my loyalties to justice. Ethically it was a nightmare."

Nash, of Grassmere Way, Cowplain, near Portsmouth, denies attempted murder.

Proceeding