JEALOUS William Hall slashed his former partner’s new boyfriend with a knife after kicking his way into her home – while he was already subject to a suspended sentence for assaulting her.
And at Warwick Crown Court he was jailed for two-and-a-half years after pleading not guilty to wounding his victim with intent, but guilty to unlawfully wounding him.
Hall, 24, of Yarrow Close, Rugby, was ordered to serve the sentence consecutive to 20 months of the 23-month suspended sentence he had been given in September.
Prosecutor Anthony Potter said Hall had previous convictions for violence, including a wounding in 2010 and common assault on his then-partner in 2012, for which he was given a community order.
Then in September last year, for a vicious and sustained assault on the same woman when he punched and headbutted her, he was given a 20-month suspended sentence.
He was also given an additional three months, also suspended, for common assault on a policewoman by spitting at her as he was being arrested.
At that hearing it was said that Hall’s partner – with whom he had a young son – was standing by him, but by early December they had split up and she was in a new relationship.
On Sunday December 6 Hall went to her home and began shouting: “Where is he then?”
When he began shouting abuse through the letterbox, ignoring her requests to leave, she started to call the police, and told him so.
But she then heard the wooden panel of the back door – which Hall had already broken a few weeks earlier – being kicked, so she retreated upstairs and woke her new partner, who was in bed.
Mr Potter said: “While she was still on the phone, she heard the defendant searching through a kitchen drawer where she kept knives.
“He appeared upstairs moments later armed with a kitchen knife and came into the room where the couple were, and where her son was on the floor.
“(Both people were) petrified, and she was trying to encourage him to jump out of a window to escape.
“(The man) shouted at Mr Hall to drop the knife, and for a moment he hesitated. Sadly he didn’t drop it, and instead he swung at (his victim) with his other hand,” said Mr Potter.
As a struggle began, Hall swung at his victim with the knife, causing a six-inch wound above his left eyebrow.
The victim managed to grab the blade off Hall, cutting his hand and fingers and damaging the tendons of one finger, for which he needed surgery.
The victim ran downstairs and threw the knife into the garden, at which Hall ran from the house.
Five days later officers returned to the address and spoke to Hall’s ex-partner about whether she had seen Hall since the incident.
She said she had not – but they searched her home and found him hiding in a bathroom cupboard and arrested him.
David Everett, defending, said: “He knows he is going to custody. He accepts that jealousy and anger at the time played a part in the offence.”
Jailing Hall, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told him: “You know that when you behave in the way you did, you will go to prison for a significant period.
“You burst your way into that house, smashing through the door, and picked up a knife and confronted (your victim) in the presence of your own child.
“You attacked him, cutting him across the forehead with that knife. It is fortunate it didn’t cut his eye.
“This was a sustained assault, and there was a degree of premeditation, and it was at the home of this woman where she and her child were entitled to feel safe.”
