A Liverpool drug dealer working in the South West has been jailed after he slashed a customer’s arm to the bone with a broken bottle in revenge for an unpaid debt of just £150.
William Brown tricked the victim into opening the door of his home in Newton Abbot, in Devon, and then lunged at him with the bottle while shouting ‘where’s my money?’.
He stabbed the man’s arm as he raised it to protect his face and caused a wound that needed hospital treatment and several stitches.
Brown carried out the attack to enforce a drug debt of £150 owed to a Liverpool based gang by the victim’s partner.
He was already under investigation for drug dealing in Torquay and went on to be caught with £9,000 worth of cocaine and heroin three months later.
He got into the house by using his girlfriend as a decoy. She pretended to be sick and he barged in when the tenants opened the door of the house in Manor Road.
Brown, aged 21, from Liverpool but now of Whiteway Road, Kingsteignton, admitted wounding, four counts of possession of class A drugs with intent to supply, and possession of criminal property.
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He was jailed for a total of five years and six months by Judge Timothy Rose at Exeter Crown Court
He told him: “The wounding was such a deliberate and pre-conceived act. You went there with a female who made an excuse to get the door open and you took a broken bottle you.
“It was a targeted and clear act of instrumental violence in the sense that you achieved your aim of wounding and intimidating the victim. The injury was profoundly unpleasant and could have been more serious than you actually inflicted.”
Mr Nigel Wraith, prosecuting, said Brown was caught with around £850 worth of drugs in Torbay on June 24, 2019 and released under investigation by police.
He carried out the attack in Manor Road, Newton Abbot on January 26, 2020, leaving the victim with two gashes on his arm which needed hospital treatment. One cut through to the bone and narrowly missed tendons.
Brown got his then partner Jemma Bishop to trick her way in and then followed her through the open door with the bottle in his hand. It was already broken.
He asked the victim: “Where’s my money? Do you think I’m some kind of d**khead? I will stab you with this. You’ve been going round town saying I’m a d**khead.”
The debt of £150 was actually owed by the victim’s partner. Brown denied involvement but police found his DNA on the blood-stained bottle outside the house.
Brown was arrested and released again but caught transporting £9.100 worth of heroin and crack from Liverpool to Torquay in a hire car on April 2, 2020. He threw the drugs out of the window but they were recovered by police.
Mr William Parkhill, defending, said Brown had a difficult childhood in the care system in Liverpool where he had 15 different foster placements.
He was recruited to a drugs gang because of his own use of cannabis and was being used as a foot soldier exploited by others further up the chain.
Bishop, aged 31, of Mellons Close, Newton Abbot, admitted two counts of actual bodily harm, two of battery, and one of attempted theft.
Her offences included attacking the partner of the stabbing victim and a shop worker who she bit after being caught stealing. She was jailed for a year and eight months by the same judge at an earlier hearing.
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