A GRANDMOTHER has been jailed for two-and-a-half years after she stabbed a neighbour during a three-year-old girl’s birthday party.

The celebration, in the front garden of Christine Robson’s home, was spoiled when a car drove up and people began throwing water bombs which soaked her and a young guest, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Robson, 46, retaliated by hurling a jug of water and plates at the attackers, but fragments accidentally cut neighbour Shaun O’Connor’s ankle.

Mr O’Connor told her to go inside, but when he got into a scuffle with her son, she stabbed him in the chest.

Christopher Morrison, prosecuting, said she had admitted stabbing Mr O’Connor with a five-inch kitchen knife.

Robson, of Severn Way, Darlington, was found guilty three weeks ago of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. She had admitted unlawful wounding, which the crown had refused to accept.

Mr O’Connor told the court about the April 22 stabbing: “She was drunk, she did not know what she was doing.

“I said to her ‘What are you doing with that knife?’ and almost immediately Christine raised her right hand and the hand came down and the knife entered my chest.”

“This woman was drunk as a lord, absolutely wrecked.”

Mr O’Connor said he took off his T-shirt as blood pumped from his chest. A neighbour bandaged it and he was taken to hospital in a car before paramedics arrived.

Paul Newcombe, mitigating, urged the judge to suspend any prison sentence on Robson, who had been a battered wife and was being treated for depression.

After the stabbing, Robson asked friends to drive her to her ex-husband’s home in Arkle Crescent, Darlington, where police found her hiding in the garden.

Sentencing her, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Peter Fox, said: “Taking up such an obviously dangerous implement and using it in the way that you did, raising it above or at head height and bringing it down into his upper chest was and is a matter which cannot possibly avoid imprisonment.”