A JEALOUS husband who stabbed his estranged wife’s new partner with a knife as the couple lay in bed has been jailed for seven years.

Bournemouth Crown Court heard on Thursday that Richard Fletcher, 47 caught a train from his home in Salisbury to Gillingham, Dorset, and then a taxi to Hillside Close, Mere, where he had previously lived with his wife and daughters.

He arrived at the house at about 5.30am and smashed the windows of the victim’s car before one of his daughters let him into the house.

Fletcher selected “the largest knife he could find” from the kitchen, which had an eight-inch blade, before going upstairs to his wife’s bedroom and stabbing her partner twice, in the arm and the back.

The 22-year-old victim managed to overpower him and grab the knife, and Fletcher then fled from the scene.

The victim suffered lacerations and a punctured lung in the attack At the time of the offence, Fletcher was subject to a conditional discharge for using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, after threatening to kill the victim on an earlier occasion.

The court heard Fletcher had suffered psychological problems since separating from his wife in September 2010, and he had also attempted suicide.

He told police officers that he went to the train station on the morning of January 25 with the intention of jumping in front of a train, but decided to travel to Mere to talk to his wife instead. He said he had “no intention of using the knife” and only took it upstairs “to persuade the victim to leave”.

Judge Peter Johnson said: “One of the tragedies of this story is that a lot of this was being witnessed by your daughter.”

He added: “In my judgement, the attack would not have stopped there. It was only because he was alerted by the turning on of the light that he was able to overpower you, which he did.”

Fletcher was sentenced to seven years and four months in prison for wounding with intent, and one month each for criminal damage and breach of a conditional discharge, to run concurrently.