Man jailed for 4 years after stabbing cousins

A MAN who stabbed two cousins in an early morning knife attack was yesterday jailed for four years.

John James Bell was arrested outside flats on Limestone Road in North Belfast brandishing two blood-stained knives and threatened to kill three officers as he was being detained.

Initially facing two charges of attempted murder, Bell admitted two counts of malicious and unlawful wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

While one of the victims was stabbed five times in the upper body, the other man sustained serious wounds which injured his internal organs.

He was rushed to hospital where at one point he received 24 units of blood. He also sustained a laceration to his kidney and lung and had to have his spleen removed.

Sending Bell to jail, Judge David Mcfarland said the more seriously injured man was “lucky to survive the incident” and praised the medical staff who saved his life.

Bell, from Broom Park in the Twinbrook area of West Belfast, was told he will serve half his eight-anda-half-year sentence in prison with the remainder on licence.

Belfast Crown Court heard the double stabbing occurred on October 19, 2015.

Bell – who at the time lived in the same block of flats as one of his victims – had been drinking with the cousins and had called police to tell them two men tried to stab him so he stabbed them back.