City trader’s knife attack on husband who left her for a friend
A MILLIONAIRE hedge fund trader attacked her husband with a knife after he began a relationship with one of her horse-riding friends.
Mother of four Nasreen Knight grappled with Julian Knight as his terrified lover hid in a cupboard under the stairs of the £1million marital farmhouse.
Knight, 37, who speaks five languages, was jailed for 15 months after a judge heard the assault came just a week after another attack on the pair at the property.
On that occasion she had ripped off Mr Knight’s glasses and punched and kicked him as he cowered in a laundry room, the court heard, – angry that he may have spent the night with her friend, Erika Hillyer, 37.
Knight then rammed her estranged husband’s Land Rover with her car as he attempted to drive away. When Mrs Hillyer, a mother of three, arrived at the property in Hough on the Hill, Lincolnshire, Knight punched her and dragged her by the hair.
Lincoln Crown Court heard she was arrested following the incident in January – a month after the Knights began divorce proceedings – but returned to the property in breach of her bail con- ditions eight days later. Prosecutor Mark Achurch described how she begged Mr Knight, a retired investment fund boss, to drop the charges against her because she feared a court case would jeopardise a new job she was due to take up with Bloomberg.
‘You can’t hide – I’m going to get you’
Knight, who had already conducted her own affair as the couple’s ten-year relationship began to crumble, eventually left the house but returned four hours later, drunk and with facial injuries, having apparently been involved in a road accident.The prosecutor said she ‘staggered’ up the drive carrying a bottle of vodka and Mr Knight, 47, let her inside so that he could help her.
But once in the house she grabbed a knife, and after a struggle with her husband, who was left ‘bleeding profusely’, ran through the house shouting she was going to kill Mrs Hillyer.
‘ The defendant grabbed a kitchen knife from the drawer where it was kept,’ Mr Achurch said. ‘She lunged out at him holding the knife in a dagger- style position. He grappled with her. In the course of that struggle his finger was cut and it bled fairly profusely. He was able to get the knife off her. She was shouting “Where the f*** is Erika? I want to kill her”. There was a further struggle. She punched Mr Knight to the face, bit him to the right shoulder and pulled his hair.
‘She was able to knock him to the floor and grabbed the knife for a second time.
‘She then ran around the house with the knife looking for Erika. She was shouting “You can’t hide. I’m going to get you”. Erika was hiding in an under-stairs area.
‘Having heard the shouting Mrs Hillyer called the police. She says in her victim personal statement just how terrified she was.’
Knight, of Frieston, Lincolnshire, admitted two charges of assault by beating and a further charge of criminal damage arising from the first incident on January 11. She admitted affray and assault occasioning actual bodily harm relating to the attack on January 19.
She was jailed on Friday and returned to the court on Monday, where Judge Hirst imposed a fiveyear restraining order which bans her from contacting the victims, or from entering Hough on the Hill.
The court heard that Mr Knight’s affair with Mrs Hillyer – who lived in Loughborough, Leicestershire – – began when she acted as his medical chaperone for appointments concerning a heart condition.