Sword attack friend jailed

A lorry driver who attacked a friend with a samurai sword after being told that he was going out his ex-girlfriend has been jailed for five years.

The victim, Dale Hickman, was so terrified when he heard Matthew Hales breaking into his barricaded Russells Hall home with a sledgehammer that he escaped through an upstairs window, slipping and breaking an ankle in his hurry to get away from Mr Hales.

Due to the injury, Mr Hickman was unable to run, giving Hales the chance to catch up and slash him with the sword and break his arm.

Hales, of Langstone Road, Dudley, pleaded guilty at Wolverhampton Crown Court yesterday to assault causing grievous bodily harm in July.

Mr Geoffrey Dann, prosecuting, said the two men had been friends for many years when 35-year-old Hales started going out with Sarah Cox.

After the relationship ended, Mr Hickman, 33, tried to bring about a reconciliation between them.

When that failed, Mr Hickman and Miss Cox struck up a friendship and out of respect to her former partner, she sought out Hales to tell him of the new relationship.

But the news came as a shock, and after a night's drinking, Hales armed himself with a sledgehammer and a samurai sword and broke into Mr Hickman's home.

Mr Bernard Linehan, defending, said: "It came as a hammer blow to him that feelings had developed between his friend and Miss Cox, and faced with that he lost control."