A jury has retired to consider verdicts in the trial of a man accused of strangling his girlfriend in a jealous rage.

Tomas Uptas is alleged to have killed Loretta Raupiene in November last year because he could not bear the thought of losing her.

Her body was discovered at the flat they shared in Victoria Road, Canterbury, after the 32-year-old Lithuanian carpenter armed himself with a BB gun and alarmed shoppers at Wincheap's Morrison's supermarket.

He was shot in the arm by armed police and arrested after being treated in hospital.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Miss Raupiene, 42, was strangled with her own scarf at the flat.

A pathologist estimated she had been dead about eight hours when her body was found on November 26.

Uptas, who has been convicted of violence in Sweden, denied murder, claiming he last saw the victim that day when she went to pay the rent.

He admitted falsely imprisoning David Bowles when holding a gun at his head and possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.