Whitchurch man jailed for stabbing boy, 16, in row over girl

Lee Cooper saw red after a gang of youths turned up at his house for the third time in a single day and took a knife out of the kitchen to confront them.

Shrewsbury Crown Court heard CCTV from a neighbour showed the 22-year-old stabbing the teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, with the knife.

The teenager collapsed to the floor but fortunately only suffered minor injuries in the assault, while Cooper went into hiding at his grandmother's house before phoning police the next day to confess what he had done.

Cooper, of Wayland Road, had admitted wounding with intent and possessing a knife at a previous court hearing and appeared at Shrewsbury yesterday to be sentenced.

Mr Andrew Wilkins, prosecuting, said on November 21 last year Cooper had been assaulted by a "group of people" because of "concerns over the defendant's new girlfriend".

The court heard Cooper, originally from Wolverhampton, had only moved to Whitchurch two months before the attack to live with his step-mother and had started dating a girl who lived on the same street.

Footage of a police officer's head camera was played in court and showed Cooper saying: "I just lost it. I got beat up twice yesterday, by six people then by four. I know what I have done.

"I stabbed somebody but I didn't intentionally mean to do it.

"They just came to my family's house causing trouble."

Mr Jonathan Veasey-Pugh, for Cooper, said his client felt "sick" about what he had done.

"He wishes it had never happened. If he could go back he tells me he wouldn't have even gone out of the house, he would have just called the police.

"There had been not one or two, but a number of incidents.

"There was a problem in the community about his relationship with this girl. He had numerous phone calls, there were invitations to fight, he was beaten up.

"He has at times an inappropriately short fuse when he does the wrong thing."

Judge Jim Tindal, sentencing Cooper, said: "I don't think I have any alternative but to send you straight to prison.

"Rather than calling the police you took a knife. You didn't intend to use the knife, but you can see from the CCTV what happened.

"This was a situation where things got out of control very quickly, and this is one of the reasons why courts treat knife crime so seriously.

"As soon as someone brings a knife to a fight, which is effectively what you did, the risk is there that someone will have their life changed by their injuries or might even die."