A woman who won more than £5m on the national lottery was stabbed in the face seven times by her partner after she told him she planned to leave him, a court has been told. Emma Brown, 50, lost 75% of her vision in her right eye after the attack by Stephen Gibbs, 45, who has been sentenced to 18 years for attempted murder. The pair had been in a relationship for more than 10 years but the “dynamics changed” after Brown’s win, with Gibbs unable to deal with his partner having more control of her life. Ieuan Bennett, prosecuting, said Gibbs accused Brown of cheating on him shortly before the attack and fitted a tracker to her car so that he could spy on her. Bennett said: “The dynamics of the relationship were changed in 2017 when she had the good fortune of winning the national lottery. She became financially independent of the defendant.” Merthyr Tydfil crown court heard Brown bought a string of properties after her win and wanted to travel around the world. But on 30 January she returned home at 7.30pm to find Gibbs drunk in the kitchen of their £700,000 home in Barry, south Wales. He questioned her about where she had been and accused her of having an affair with a schoolfriend. Bennett said: “She informed him their relationship was at an end. She told him she had seen the relationship falling apart for a number of months. She remembers him losing his temper and grabbing her by the throat.” The court heard Gibbs slammed his partner into a wall and put her in a headlock. Brown tried to escape by running to the front of the house but Gibbs caught up. The prosecutor said: “She must have gone to the ground. She remembers him going into the kitchen and taking a large kitchen knife.” He began to repeatedly stab her. Bennett said: “She remembers the sight of a knife she thought was going into one of her eyes.” Brown pleaded with Gibbs to stop and, thinking she would die, asked him to tell her mother she loved her. She was left face down in a pool of blood and a neighbour heard her calling for help. Police found Gibbs in his Mercedes with a knife with a long, blood-stained blade on the passenger seat. As well as suffering impaired vision, Brown was left scarred and lost movement in her right arm. In a victim impact statement, Brown said she felt “completely numb to everything” after the attack. “I can’t even begin to contemplate opening myself up again,” she said. “I used to be the life and soul of the party but now I don’t want to be in a large group. I will carry this with me for the rest of my life. I struggle to deal with the fact that we were together for 12 years and we were happy.” Gibbs was previously jailed for six years for stabbing a former partner’s 11-year-old son six times with a kitchen knife. Judge Richard Twomlow told Gibbs he posed “a significant risk” to the public. He will serve 13 years of his sentence in prison and five years on licence, meaning he will receive supervision in the community.