Man in terrifying drive to remote cemetery before being stabbed and left for dead
VICTIM WAS TOLD ‘THERE’S NO WAY OUT FOR YOU NOW’
you die you deserve it.” The victim’s phone rang and the defendant took it from him before driving off.
However, Spong dropped his own mobile, recovered at the scene by the police who found his incriminating text messages.
He was arrested in the early hours at an address in Alan Moss Road, Loughborough, said Mr Gibbs.
Spong, a father of three, of Barker Crescent, Melton, admitted causing grievous bodily harm and possessing a knife.
Mr Gibbs said it was “unclear” how the victim had misbehaved towards Spong’s sister, while walking her home from a pub the previous week.
The victim told the police he had been drinking and accepted he may have acted inappropriately in some way, the court was told.
In a personal impact statement, he said: “I was stabbed and left for dead.”
He described suffering from “night terrors.”
His mental affected. health has been
Fearing reprisals, he said: “I’m constantly looking over my shoulder. I’m a shell of myself and feel I’ve been robbed of the best years of my life.”
Spong also pleaded guilty to unrelated offences of affray and criminal damage.
It involved him making menacing threats of violence to his then estranged partner, before putting a smoke grenade through the letterbox of her family’s home in Melton, at 3am, on Sunday, February 2.
It caused terror for the occupants, who feared the smoke-logged house was ablaze and the fire service attended, although the damage was confined to scorch marks on the carpet.
Spong was said to have since reconciled with his partner.
Mr Gibbs said the defendant’s record of previous convictions included false imprisonment, causing actual bodily harm, harassment and three knife possessions.
Recorder Francesca Levett said: “These offences arose because you can’t control your temper.”
She said of the stab victim’s car journey to the graveyard: “It was 15 minutes away and he knew something bad was going to happen, it must have been terrifying.
“You told him there was ‘no way back’ and you stabbed him saying if he died he ‘deserved it’ and left him bleeding profusely.”
She said the “smoke bomb” incident the previous month must have been “very frightening” for the occupants.
A 10-year restraining order was imposed, banning any contact with the stab victim.