Jail for knifeman who attacked girlfriend after finding naked nemesis

Zion Yearwood, 22, used a brick or rock to batter his way through the glass back door of the Blackbird Leys property on August 13 last year.

While his love rival fled upstairs and out a first-floor window dressed only in his underpants, Yearwood got through the back door to be greeted by the sight of his girlfriend in the nude.

He demanded to know where the man, whom he recognised, had gone. He told the woman: “Where is he? I’ve seen him getting a drink.”

She stood in his way but Yearwood punched her to the side of the face. He pushed her aside and made his way upstairs, having not seen his rival’s earlier leap for freedom through the first floor window.

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Yearwood kept asking where the second man was, telling her to ‘stop lying’.

Having armed himself with two knives, he struck her on the head again with such force that the handle ‘flew off’ one of the blades.

Prosecuting, Matthew Knight told Oxford Crown Court on Monday (March 20): “Mr Yearwood was still intent on locating [the rival], asking [his victim] to call him. He said if she didn’t do so he would stab her.

“She refused to do so and, in response to that, Mr Yearwood stabbed out – seemingly losing his temper – and thrust the second knife towards [the victim].”

He struck the top of her head, leaving her with a 2cm cut that was later glued at hospital.

While she tried to stem the bleeding from her head, the defendant ordered her to clear up the glass from the smashed back door.

Police arrived at the house, having been called by an unnamed third party living in a different town who had apparently been told of the assault.

Appearing before Oxford Crown Court on Monday, Yearwood, of Benouville Close, Oxford, pleaded guilty shortly before his trial began to causing grievous bodily harm, threatening a person with a knife in a private place and criminal damage.

In her statement, the victim told police she thought she was about to be killed and her daughter would be left without a mother.

Mitigating, Jonathan Coode likened the knife attack to ‘what in France would probably be described as a crime of passion’.

The previous evening his client and the victim had been intimate, he said. They parted ways – she on a night out – but made plans to see each other the following morning.

He arrived at the house at around 6.30am after she stopped responding to his messages in the early hours and found ‘her other suitor’ in the house.

Referring to the CCTV footage of the second man’s bare-chested bid for freedom, Mr Coode told the judge: “A picture tells a thousand words. He’s in his underpants when he jumps out that window.

“It’s quite clear what was going on or was about to be going on.

“Quite frankly, your honour, Mr Yearwood lost his temper and one can perhaps see why in those circumstances.”

Within weeks of the attack, the victim had joined Yearwood’s mother to see her attacker in Bullingdon prison, the court heard.

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Jailing Yearwood for two years and five months, Recorder John Bate-Williams said he would take into account the ‘real shock’ the defendant would have felt when he realised his ‘nemesis was actually in the house with the woman you were expecting to spend the rest of the night with’.

But he added that there was ‘no need’ for the attacker to pick up the knives and that the assault ‘must have been terrifying’ for his victim.

The judge imposed a restraining order banning the defendant from contacting his former on-off girlfriend.