A man murdered his partner with his bare hands after becoming jealous about her serving customers in the Thai restaurant where they both worked, a court has been told.
Manthana Khantharat hid in a bathroom in an attempt to escape the fatal and "terrifying" assault at the couple's Albion Park Rail home, south of Wollongong, on December 18, 2022.
On Wednesday, Natthawut Tammajanta was sentenced to up to 23 years and four months in jail after pleading guilty to her murder.
The pair, both originally from Thailand, met in 2022 while working at the Siam Kingdom restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Newington and started a relationship.
However, they were both let go by the restaurant after Tammajanta, who worked as a chef, was seen being aggressive towards Ms Khantharat while she was serving a customer.
The couple then began both working at the Taste of Thai restaurant in Shellharbour in November of 2022, and moved into the Albion Park Rail premises together along with two other people who also worked at the restaurant.
Colleagues would later tell the court Ms Khantharat seemed to be afraid of Tammajanta and that he would yell at her, and one said she reported being hit by him when he was drunk.
On the night of the murder, Tammajanta was drinking heavily including consuming alcohol during his shift and continuing afterwards to drink straight from a wine bottle.
Afterwards, the couple drove home together and soon after neighbours heard yelling from their apartment which began about 10pm.
According to Tammajanta, what followed was a "fight" between the pair, with prosecutors accepting he did not intend to kill her.
“Everything happened so quickly. I don’t know how it happened," he would later tell police.
Chunks of Khantharat's hair and blood stains were found around the apartment suggesting an intense and prolonged attack.
In her sentencing remarks, Justice Natalie Adams said police who arrived at the scene about 11.35pm observed Tammajanta's hands to be lacerated and swollen from his repeated assaults on Ms Khantharat.
"At one stage, the deceased had locked herself in the bathroom to escape the assault, but the offender was able to break down the door to continue his attack," she told the NSW Supreme Court.
"The deceased’s final moments must have been terrifying".
Tammajanta described himself as a “jealous person” who felt insecure in the relationship and suspicious that his partner was dishonest or too close with other men.
"The deceased was killed in her own home by an intimate partner," Justice Adams said.
"The dominant feature of the relatively short relationship was the offender’s intense irrational jealousy and his desire to control the deceased’s behaviour."
Tammajanta was given a non-parole period of 16 years and four months.
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