A jealous man has been jailed for stabbing his ex-girlfriend with a knife after he suspected she had received a text message from another man.
The ex-partner of brute Mark Griffiths was left with blood gushing out of her arm after he inflicting the wound at a hotel in front of her 12-year-old son.
The youngster screamed after seeing his mum exposed to the violence and in a quick-thinking instinct took off his t-shirt and tied it around his mum’s arm to apply pressure to the wound.
33-year-old Griffiths admitted stabbing the woman on June 13 and has been jailed for two years.
A court heard this week how the relationship between Griffiths and the woman was short and that it had ended about eight weeks prior to the attack.
Hull Crown Court heard how the woman went away to stay at the Dovedale Hotel and Restaurant, in Albert Road, Cleethorpes, with her son.
Griffiths told her that he was “in a bad place” so she invited him to go along, according to Grimsby Telegraph.
They were in her room when she received a joking message on her phone from a female friend.
Griffiths abruptly got up and left the room without speaking to her.
She suspected that he was upset because he thought that the message was from another man.
Griffiths knocked on the hotel room door and asked for his train ticket but, when she gave it to him, she told him that trains did not run until 6am.
“The defendant was aggressive and angry,” said Mr Lowe.
Griffiths asked the woman who the other man was in the message on her phone but both she and her son explained that it was a joke and it was not another man at all.
He got “more and more aggressive” and she asked him to leave but he refused.
The woman told her son to run to the hotel exit and she followed him.
In the foyer area, there was a serviette containing a knife on a tray on a small table near the front door.
Griffiths picked up the knife and put it in his hand down by his side.
There was an exchange between them and the woman pushed or punched his body or face while he was still holding the knife.
He lifted up the knife and aimed it at her upper body.
“He went towards her and she put her arm up to protect herself,” said Mr Lowe.
The knife hit her in the armpit and Griffiths ran off.
“Her son saw the whole thing from a few yards away and started to scream,” said Mr Lowe.
There was blood coming from the wound and the son removed his T-shirt and tied it around his mother’s shoulder to stop the bleeding.
There was blood in the hallway of the hotel and the woman suffered a 2cm wound to her right arm that was half an inch deep.
She was given medication at hospital and discharged.
“Later that day, the police found a knife discarded in a residential front garden,” said Mr Lowe.
Griffiths had convictions for 68 previous offences, including assault causing actual bodily harm, assaults, arson, affray and possessing an offensive weapon.
Stephen Welford, mitigating, said it was a very short-lived, almost instantaneous incident that was not planned.
“It was a table knife or a butter knife, not a highly dangerous weapon,” said Mr Welford.
The confrontation did happen in front of a child but there had been no earlier arguments or incidents on other occasions.
Judge John Thackray QC told Griffiths: “Your case is more serious because it is domestic-related.
“Your former partner was entitled to feel safe and secure in your company and certainly not to be attacked with a knife.
“This was a serious episode of domestic abuse and it could have been so much worse had your victim not reacted to protect herself.”
The courts dealt with single stab wound cases that led to injuries sustained by the woman.
“Your victim must have been terrified when you stabbed her, as must the child who was present at the scene,” said Judge Thackray.
Griffiths, from Rawmarsh, Rotherham, was jailed for two-and-a-half years.
