A ‘relentless’ stalker has been banned from going to Newton Abbot after plaguing his former girl with unwanted messages, gifts and visits.

Denis Tabaku made his ex-partner feel so unsafe that she left her job so he could not contact her at work and signed over her car to him in the hope he would leave her alone.

He used a shared Spotify account to blackmail her emotionally by making playlists of suicide songs and threatening to take his own life.

The couple had been together for seven years before she ended the relationship in late 2021. He responded by a stalking campaign which started with him turning up at her home in Newton Abbot on January 1, 2022.

He was warned off by the police but persisted with his stalking, sending a present to her workplace on Valentine’s Day. His messages got more sinister when he sent her a photo of her car outside her new partner’s home, demonstrating that he was following her.

Tabaku set up a Facebook Messenger group and posted a photo of her face with the caption Stupid and went to her home where he grabbed her hands to force her to talk to him.

She twice went to her car to find he had got access to it and moved it, once to her father’s house, and once to London. He used her Amazon account to order goods for himself without her knowing.

Tabaku, aged 31, of Milligan Road, Leicester, admitted stalking and was jailed for 12 weeks, suspended for 18 months and ordered to do 120 hours unpaid work and attend a 30-session Building Better Relationships programme.

He was also banned from any further contact with the victim for five years by a restraining order and excluded from an area around Newton Abbot by a tagged exclusion order,

The judge told him: 'You stalked her relentlessly. You seemed to feel that because you felt strongly for her, you were entitled to have some contact with her. It doesn’t, and that is the end of it.

'You made uninvited remote contact, unwanted personal contact, you plagued her about the car, you plagued her through Spotify. You sent her emotionally abusive messages and manhandled her to make her pay attention to you.

'Quite understandably, it left her in fear and to her changing her security and her job.'

Mr Herc Ashworth, prosecuting, said the stalking started when Tabaku turned up uninvited and unannounced at his ex-partner’s home on January 1, 2022, shortly after she ended the relationship.

His activities continued until he was arrested on July 16 that year and his contact included getting into her car against her will, and numerous different approaches through social media.

Mr Thomas Faulkner, defending, said Tabaku has moved on with his life and has a new partner who is pregnant with his baby. He was devastated by the breakdown of his previous relationships but accepts that he reacted wrongly.