Teenage Black Country drug dealer jailed after stabbing customer
A teenager who stabbed a baseball bat-wielding customer when a drug deal went wrong has been locked up.
Tariarno Davis was aged 17 and had a conviction for selling cocaine and heroin and a caution for carrying a knife when he met Matthew Stanton outside a shop in Dangerfield Lane, Darlaston, a judge heard.
The defendant, now just days from his 19th birthday, urged him to go round the corner to discuss the proposed drugs sale on April 4 last year, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
"The deal went wrong and developed into an argument which led to Stanton producing a baseball bat at which this defendant took out a knife with a ten to 12 inch blade," said Ms Anne Scott-Jones, prosecuting.
She continued: "There was a physical altercation during which Davis brandished the knife and stabbed the other man in the left side under the ribs."
Stanton hurled racist abuse at the defendant before fleeing from the scene as the teenager threatened to kill him, the court was told.
Baseball bat behind curtain
The wounded man sought sanctuary in the porch of a nearby house whose alarmed occupant alerted police as he hid his baseball bat behind a curtain and never mentioned to the officers that he had been armed with a weapon, explained the prosecutor.
Stanton was taken to hospital with a collapsed, punctured lung caused by the single stab wound and was detained for several days.
He did not attend the court case but was said to have made a good recovery.
Davis was released on bail after the stabbing and months later threatened a supermarket security guard with a hunting knife.
That incident happened when he was told to leave the Asda Darlaston superstore in St Lawrence Way after he and a group of friends piggybacked the shop's wifi system on November 20.
He was disarmed and detained in the car park by two guards and members of the public until police arrived.
Mr Dominic Ball, defending, argued: "Clearly Stanton had intended to use a weapon that could have caused serious injury but the defendant went over the top while defending himself.
"In the Asda car park he was trying to cause a distraction - not serious alarm and distress - which would have allowed him to escape."
Davis from Chafney Drive, Darlaston pleaded guilty to wounding and possession of a knife.
He was sent to a Young Offenders Institution for two years and eight months by Judge Dean Kershaw who told him: "The stabbing was a very frightening incident which could have been so much more serious.
"You are a dangerous person with a high risk of causing harm to the public."
