A MAN who stabbed his stepson in the neck after a row about him moving back into the family home ended in an axe attack walked free from Court after a judge ruled there were “extenuating and exceptional”

circumstances.

Kenneth Blight was said to have feared for his life and lashed out in despair when he was attacked with an axe by 19-year-old Andrew Nelson at the house in Thornaby, near Stockton, on May 30.

Teesside Crown Court heard yesterday that Mr Nelson needed multiple blood transfusions as surgeons worked all night to repair the wound and reconstruct arteries and nerves in his neck and chest.

The drama unfolded at the home 51-year-old Blight shared with his partner, Gloria Nelson, in Princes Square, to which the stepson had returned two weeks earlier.

Tensions between the two men centred on Blight believing Mr Nelson was “sponging”

off his mother, and because the teenager had been chased home that day by drug dealers to whom he owed money.

In the lead-up to the bloodbath, Blight, a divorced, unemployed joiner, was said to have told Mr Nelson: “I don’t want drug dealers kicking in my door looking for you.”

Mr Nelson grabbed his stepfather by the throat and kicked him to the floor before grabbing an axe.

Blight was hit twice in the legs with the blunt end of the axe, and was then slashed across the arm with the blade.

He also suffered cuts to his hands when he tried to defend himself.

He told police he could not have run away because he would have been easily caught, so he picked up a knife from the kitchen to try to make Mr Nelson hand over or drop his weapon.

Mr Nelson ran from the house to a neighbour’s home where he collapsed.

Christopher Knox, mitigating, said Blight had never been in trouble before.

“He accepts that in the fracas he swung a single wild haymaker which caused the injury that this young man sustained,” said Mr Knox.

“He was frightened by what happened.

“He denies doing more than reaching for the drawer and picking the knife that came to hand with a view to threatening his stepson into dropping the weapon and stopping the violence.”

Judge Peter Fox imposed a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years with supervision, after Blight admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

The judge told Blight: “Your intent to do serious injury needs to be judged in light of a momentary retaliation in the acute anxiety of the moment.

“It is, therefore, among the most extenuating and exceptional of circumstances.”