A jilted boyfriend who staged a terrifying murder bid on the father of his former partner’s new baby has been jailed for nine years.
Mark Cornwell armed himself with a knife before entering a bedroom where Michael Watson was sleeping along with Anne-Marie Robertson and their days-old child.
Cornwell, 31, punched his victim on the face. The victim woke up to find his attacker on top of him and about to stab him in the chest.
Advocate depute Eoghainn Maclean told the High Court in Edinburgh: “Instinctively, Mr Watson managed to grab the blade with both hands and fought against the accused as he tried to force it down into his upper body.”
The prosecutor said: “As they struggled the accused repeatedly said he was going to kill him.”
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Miss Robertson, who was screaming, tried unsuccessfully to get Cornwell off the victim. But the noise alerted her grandparents and her grandfather grappled with the attacker and pulled him off the bed.
Cornwell left the bedroom at the grandparents’ home in Cook Street, in Fife, shouting: “This isn’t over.”
The court heard that the armed intruder knew that the grandmother let the family’s dogs out early in the morning and the door was left unlocked.
Judge Lord Boyd of Duncansby said: “It is only through the determined efforts of Mr Watson himself with the assistance of his partner and her grandparents that you did not succeed in that endeavour.”
He told Cornwell that he would have faced a 10-year jail sentence for the crime if he was convicted after a trial.
Mr Watson, 35, was taken to the Victoria Hospital, in Kirkcaldy, and 14 stitches were put into his hand wounds.
First offender Cornwell, of Allan Crescent, Dunfermline, earlier pled guilty to attempting to murder Mr Watson on February 23 last year.
He admitted entering the flat in Cook Street uninvited and assaulting the victim to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement and to the danger of his life by punching him, threatening to kill him, repeatedly trying to strike him on the chest with the knife and repeatedly striking him on the hands with the weapon.
Mr Maclean said that Cornwell was in a relationship with Miss Robertson for about eight years up until June 2017.
He said that Cornwell struggled with their separation and about August 2017 had “a suicidal episode”.
The day before the attempted murder he drove past the couple on Cook Street. He returned early the following morning to launch the murder bid on his victim.
Police spotted him driving back to his mother’s home after the attack and he was arrested and the knife recovered from the car.
Defence counsel David Nicolson said Cornwell maintained that he had no memory of the attack, which he described as “desperately serious”.
He said he remembered taking a knife from his home with the intention of committing suicide in front of his former partner.
