A FATHER-to-be has escaped jail after attacking a "drunken yob" who was trying to break into his car.

Thomas Maines, 25, woke up to find a man trying to steal his car in the middle of the night. He jumped out of bed and ran outside, armed with a kitchen knife, to confront the drunken man.

Yesterday he ended up in the dock after admitting unlawfully wounding the man with the knife.

Maines had saved up to buy the car so that he could drive his pregnant girlfriend to and from hospital. He also used it to travel to his parents' home to sit with his handicapped sister for a few hours each day.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that when he saw the man trying to break into the car, his anger boiled over.

Prosecutor Michael Hodson said that the man, Michael Reily, had decided to take the car to get home after a night out drinking.

He smashed the window of the F-reg Ford Orion before Maines came out of his house armed with the knife.

Mr Reily had got out of the car, but had fallen and felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, which turned out to be a shallow cut He was also cut on his right side and his thigh, and the knife was pushed inside his mouth.

The incident happened as Maines slept in his home in Campbell Place, Newcastle, on December 5 last year.

Glen Gatland, mitigating, said: "He genuinely believed that this person was either going to make off with his car or was going to attack him."

Judge David Hodson sentenced Maines to nine months' imprisonment suspended for two years. He said only the trying circumstances of the crime allowed him to avoid jailing Maines.