A THUG has been jailed for slashing a homeless woman with a knife after she tried to call the police from a locked bathroom.

Niyah Ivey broke the door down at the squalid drug den in Grand Parade in Brighton, where homeless drug addict Sarah Marrill had been invited to stay in November last year.

She cowered and curled herself up into a ball under the sink while her mobile phone was snatched from her hands in the middle of a 999 call.

Then Ivey tried tried to slash her in the face, but she managed to use a mop bucket to protect herself. So Ivey slashed her in the thigh before calling a friend to boast he had “sliced the bitch”.

The 19-year-old, of Elmers End Road in Penge, London, appeared at Brighton Crown Court where he admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

Rachael Beckett, prosecuting, said Ms Marrill had been invited to squat at the flat in October with her homeless boyfriend Neil Hudders.

It was to be a safe place where they could have a meal and a bath and be off the streets.

But the atmosphere changed when Ivey arrived and took the bedroom, forcing the couple to sleep in the bathroom.

The 999 call was played in court, where Ms Marrill is heard to scream and cry in terror after Ivey broke in.

Police arrived moments later and body camera footage shows her in trauma after the attack.

Judge Shani Barnes said: “It’s a depressing statement of this case, that we have a 19-year-old boy terrorising a grown woman to the extent that she was cowering like a dog under a sink.”

Michael Lavers, defending, said Ivey’s parents separated when he was a baby.

Despite being from a good and loving family, he was expelled from school in his early teens and appeared before youth courts in south London for small offences, including spitting at a bus driver.

He left a pupil referral unit with no qualifications, and then failed to see through college courses and an apprenticeship in catering.

Ivey came to Brighton and befriended a 53-year-old man named Desmond, known as “Uncle Desmond”, who owned the flat in Grand Parade.

Mr Lavers said Ivey was emotionally immature but had accepted his wrongdoing and felt “ashamed”.

Judge Barnes addressed the youngster, who appeared in the dock wearing a dark suit and blue striped tie, while his family watched from the public gallery.

The judge said: “With your family listening, I hope you do feel ashamed. You are from a good family where everyone wanted to love you. No one abandoned you.

“You are incredibly lucky that you didn’t cause greater harm to the victim, otherwise you might have appeared for attempted murder.”

She sentenced him to six years and four months in prison, and warned him that it would be a big test to see if he could turn his life around.

Judge Barnes added: “I hope you spend your time planning a better life, to study, and come out to make a decent living and put this behind you.”