A STANLEY knife wielding slasher has been jailed for attacking a Good Samaritan who went to the aid of an elderly lady.

Zakaria Mosam was drunk and shouting abuse at the woman who was waiting for a bus in Newton Abbot when a 17-year-old apprentice intervened to tell him to stop.

Mosam reacted by attacking the teenager three times and chasing him through the streets before slashing his puffer jacket to ribbons and leaving a seven centimetre wound on his back.

The attack took place in January and it was only the victim’s bulky winter jacket that saved him from much more serious injuries, Exeter Crown Court was told.

Builder Mosam had been put on a community order by local magistrates just three days before for an earlier offence of battery but he went out with friends after work on a Friday night and got drunk in the Jolly Farmer pub.

He left at 10.10 pm but went back to carry on drinking when he was thrown off a bus when the driver spotted that he was carrying a Stanley knife with a six inch handle and short but very sharp blade.

The attack happened when Mosam went back outside and started abusing an elderly lady. The 17-year-old told him to stop and there was a short confrontation in which he did not produce the blade.

He then followed the victim and attacked him twice more while slashing at him with the weapon before chasing him and inflicting the injury on his back.

The victim read out his impact statement to the court and said he suffered nightmares and flashbacks and is now warier about going into Newton Abbot with his friends.

Zakarie Mosam, aged 21, of Lower French Park, admitted wounding and possessing a bladed article and was jailed for two years and two months by Judge Robert Linford.

He told him: 'You produced a Stanley blade and used it to slash at the victim and that takes this case to another level altogether. It was an enormously dangerous thing to have done and could have hurt this man even more severely than it did.

'I have heard the Victim Personal Statement which he had the courage to come and read in court and is quite clear the effect your attack has had on him.

'Just three days before, you were in court for an offence of battery and were given a community order, that was an opportunity which you were determined not to take.'

Mr Michael Brown, prosecuting, said the incident happened on the night of Friday January 13 this year after Mosam had gone straight from work to the Jolly Farmer and got drunk.

He said the victim has been left with a seven centimetre scar on his back but would have suffered much greater injuries but for his puffer jacket.

He said: 'The photographs of the jacket make it abundantly clear the victim was slashed on multiple occasions. He tried to run away but was pursued by the defendant, who was still armed with the knife.

'He suffered what is described as a superficial laceration to his back, which we say was far from superficial. It is clear the puffer jacket acted as a buffer against far more serious injury.'

Mr William Parkhill, defending, said Mosam is a builder who is hoping to start his own business and who is in a stable relationship with a partner who is pregnant with his child.

He said: 'He is not normally and drinker and had been drinking more than he usually would on the night of this offence. He is remorseful, he is sorry about what happened and he followed that up with an early guilty plea.'