POLICE have warned people not to approach a prisoner on the run who has previously stabbed a pregnant partner and attacked his ex-wife with a metal bar at her place of work.

Officers issued an urgent appeal for help to locate David Dent , 46, who is wanted on recall to prison in connection with a serious offence.

Dent, who has links to the Chippenham area, is a white male, of medium build, brown eyes and approximately 5ft 7in tall.

The most recent police images show him with dark brown collar-length hair and a beard.

Dent was jailed for two years and 11 months at Swindon Crown Court on March 22 last year and a seven-year restraining order was imposed to stop him from going near his former partner.

The Wiltshire mum, then aged 38, watched as Dent was jailed by Judge Jason Taylor QC, who told him his attack had been sustained and repeated.

In a victim personal statement read to the court, she told Dent: “You think you’ve won, but you will never win against me.”

After the couple had split, Dent had peppered her with messages in the weeks leading up to the assault and she was applying to the courts for a non-molestation order.

The court heard Dent had deliberately gone to her place of work at Lackham College near Chippenham on January 20 last year and confronted his estranged wife in the car park with a metal crowbar.

 Judge Taylor said the aggravating features of the case were that Dent had not only disposed of the weapon but had employed a significant degree of pre-meditation.

“You deliberately sought her out at her place of work [and] you went equipped with the weapon. You lay in wait whilst she was arriving in the car park.”

She was struck twice in the head and once in the leg by a long, thin metal object, presumed to be a metal crowbar, but managed to scare him away by kicking out at him and screaming for help. Her colleagues came to her aid.

In 2004, Dent was jailed for eight years after he stabbed his pregnant partner – a different woman to the victim of the Lackham attack – in the stomach.

Dent, of Hewlett Close, Chippenham, had admitted unlawful wounding when appearing in court via video link from HMP Bristol.

Anyone who spots Dent should not approach him but call police immediately on 999 quoting log 54220071193.