A violent thug who attacked a woman with a hammer in Wishaw while he was out on early release from prison has been sent back behind bars.
Dale Russell targeted his victim at a flat in Wishaw because she allegedly owed him £200.
Russell, 24, a prisoner, appeared at Hamilton Sheriff Court last week for sentencing having already admitted assaulting the woman in Linnhe Crescent on May 9 last year.
Russell was sentenced to a total of five years and four months in total.
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That is made up of three years and seven months for the assault plus a return to jail for roughly one year and nine months as he was on early release at the time of the crime.
At a previous court hearing, fiscal Neil Thomson, said that the victim and two others were in an upstairs flat shortly after midnight on the date in question.
The downstairs outside door wasn’t locked and a man shouting her name could be heard entering and making his way upstairs.
Mr Thomson told the court: “The three women went to the landing at the top of the stairs and saw the man was Dale Russell.
“He shouted, ‘You owe me £200’, then produced a hammer which he brandished at her.
“Thereafter he struck [the victim] on the ribs and the head.
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“The other women tried to intervene and one went back inside to phone the police.
“A struggle continued between the victim and Russell.
“He stood over her as she lay on the stairs and stabbed her repeatedly with a kitchen knife in the area of the shoulder blade.
“At the same time he was continuing to hit her with the hammer. Her friends warned him the police would be arriving and this caused Russell to stop and run from the building. Police officers arrested him about an hour later.
“[The victim] was taken to hospital. She had three one-centimetre cuts – one behind the ear and two at the back of her shoulder. These were cleaned and sealed.
“She also had abrasions and contusions to the side of the ribs and cuts to knuckles and fingers on both hands.”
