Barnoldswick man jailed after stab threat to girlfriend (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Barnoldswick man jailed after stab threat to girlfriend

10:00pm Sunday 1st July 2012 in Pendle By Wendy Barlow, Court reporter

A VIOLENT thug who gashed his girlfriend's neck with a knife after he had just come out of jail for assaulting her, has been locked up for 19 months.

Daniel Brown, 28, had also threatened to rip victim Lucy Hardman's father's head off, to put windows through and to tear her dog's legs apart in his latest outburst, on May 25.

Brown has 90 convictions and has received and flouted anti-social behaviour orders in the past.

The defendant, from Barnoldswick, but of no fixed address, admitted assault causing actual bodily harm, common assault and using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour and had been committed for sentence by Pennine magistrates.

Neil Fryman, prosecuting, said Lucy Hardman was the defendant's on/off girlfriend. He went round to her house, very drunk, with a bottle of cider in his hand. Brown went straight to sleep on her couch and, knowing her father was coming home, she wanted him out. She woke the defendant up at about 2pm, told him to leave and he refused.

Brown became angry and violent, was making a sandwich, picked up a butter knife and cut her neck, inflicting a two centimetre laceration.

Mr Fryman said Ms Hardman's friend Clare Greenwood, who had been with the victim, became scared. When she and Ms Hardman said they would call the police, the defendant said: "If you do, I will stab you."

Brown left, threatening to put the windows in, to batter the pair of them and to rip the dog's legs apart. Police were called and the defendant ran off.

Richard Taylor, for the defendant, said he had shown immediate remorse by his guilty plea.

Sentencing, Judge Beverley Lunt told the defendant: "You have got an appalling record. It's a seriously aggravating feature that you had only just been released from a ridiculously short prison sentence, imposed for no less than six offences of battery against the very same woman."

The judge added: "Short sentences are not deterring you. You have got this dreadful record for violence and I must make sure I protect the public from you."