An 18-year-old university student thought she was going to die when she was dragged into a park and raped, a jury has heard.

Jozef Janczura, 33, allegedly grabbed the woman as she walked alone wearing headphones and strangled her to the point where she was drifting in and out of consciousness.

After the attack on 2 December 2018, the defendant allegedly apologised to the woman, Southampton crown court was told. Janczura denies rape and assault causing actual bodily harm.

Martyn Booth, prosecuting, told the jury the woman had been socialising with friends at her halls of residence when she decided to go for a walk alone to Riverside Park in Southampton.

He said she told police she had seen her attacker following her and he grabbed her from behind.

Booth said: “She was walking down that path, she still had her headphones on, she was still listening to music and all of a sudden she was attacked from behind. The man grabbed her from behind, he had an arm around her neck and, with the other, dragged her off the pathway into the park.

“She struggled, she tried to fight back her attacker but he was able to overpower her and he forced her to the floor. She described the man as being on top of her while she was on the floor and the man strangling her to the point she was in and out of consciousness, in that fuzzy state of mind.”

He added: “This was a terrifying incident, one in which she genuinely thought she was going to die.”

Booth said after the rape his “passing shot” was to say sorry. Other than to say: “shut up” during the incident, this is all he said to her, Booth said.

The prosecutor told the jury that DNA taken from the victim matched the defendant. “The chances of those DNA swabs being left by someone other than the defendant or someone unrelated to him amounts to odds of a billion to one – that is quite a startling number in any interpretation. The prospects of it being anyone else are minimal in the extreme.”

He added that CCTV footage from the area appeared to show the defendant walking in the area of the late-night attack. Booth said Janczura, of Southampton, denied he was the man involved.

The trial continues.