An Oldham headmistress was stabbed on her driveway by a next-door neighbour who had kept a piece of paper in his pocket saying ‘Gna kill u k’, a court heard today.
Gillian Kay, 39, was subjected to a frenzied attack as she arrived home after a day running Propps Hall Primary School in Failsworth, Oldham.
A court heard paranoid schizophrenic Mark Pierson, 48, whom she had known for ten years shouted: ‘I’m going to kill you you f**king b**ch’ then stabbed her in the head and neck with a four inch long screwdriver.
As she lay on the ground screaming and pleading for her life, Pierson allegedly carried on his attack – and was only stopped when a passing motorist spotted the attack and intervened.
A jury was told Pierson ‘calmly walked off’ to the house he shared with his parents next door in Rochdale while Mrs Kay lay bloodied and bruised on the ground.
Emergency services were called to the scene on April 25 last year and Mrs Kay was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital.
The police were immediately pointed in the direction of Pierson’s house and he was arrested – telling officers he had been subject to ‘ten years of abuse’ and he had ‘three bags of evidence’ to prove it.
Today at Manchester Crown Court, the headmistress, who lives with husband Martin and daughter Lauren, gave evidence behind a screen.
She said: “He had a really contorted face.
”He looked really angry. He was aiming at my face. The only way I can describe it is frenzied. It was really quick with no pauses in between.
“I felt the blows go into my head. He was using a lot of force because he had pulled on my jacket to pull me to him so I was close to him. The force pushed me on the floor so I was on my back. I was trying to fight him off.”
She told how she got to know Pierson through his parents and added: “Prior to April there had been some issues between me and him. I got home at about 5 o’clock and there was nobody around when I pulled on to the drive.
“I went round to the boot to get my laptop and noticed someone standing next to me, then I realised it was Mark Pierson. I didn’t have a chance to say anything to him.
“He was less than a metre away from me. I just saw him staring at me and before I had a chance and before I had a chance to say anything he went into his jacket and pulled out a screwdriver.
“I was so petrified. As soon as he pulled it out he started attacking me with it. I didn’t say anything and he was saying ‘I’m going to kill you, you f***ing b**ch’.”
Mrs Kay said she kept screaming in the hope someone would come to her aid but Pierson continued to rain down blows.
“I remember kicking him to try and put space between us but my body twisted and then he got the back of my head,” she said.
“I continued screaming all the way through. He was saying ‘I want to get you, you b**ch’.
“It felt like it was going on forever. I was screaming and screaming and finding it hard to keep him off me. I remember thinking ‘this is it’, then a white van pulled into the side of the road.
“Then he got off me and dropped the screwdriver and went towards his house. The neighbours were now around and then my husband. Heather [neighbour] was holding my head and trying to stop the blood.”
Mrs Kay was airlifted to hospital where she was treated for a number of stab wounds including a 3cm deep cut the side of her head and a 1cm long puncture wound to her cheekbone.
She also had 3cm deep puncture wound to the lower back of her skull which had hair pushed into the cut.
Pierson, who has ‘paranoid persecutory delusions’, was ruled unfit to stand trial due to his mental illness by Mr Justice Kenneth Parker but a jury is being asked to decide whether he carried out the attack.
During her evidence, Pierson was heard to shout to Mrs Kay: “I wanted you in court, I didn’t want you dead.”
He also interrupted proceedings with shouts of ‘perjury, perjury’ while Mrs Kay spoke from behind a screen.
Prosecutor Miss Charlotte Crangle said that when police arrested Pierson he claimed he had been harassed for ten years and pointed towards plastic bags that contained essential evidence.
“In the bags were thousands of pages of documents written by Pierson. He was put in the van and searched. He had another screwdriver in the lining of his coat. The other screwdriver was spotted close to Mrs Kay with blood stains on.
“There was some blood from Mrs Kay on the defendant’s jeans and a small bit of paper was found in his jeans pocket which refers to killing someone. It said ‘Gna kill u k’.
“In this ferocious and frightening attack, the threats that he was going to kill her and the paper in his pocket, coupled with where the blows were aimed at can only lead to one conclusion and that is you can have no doubt that he was trying to kill Gillian Kay on that day.”
Image courtesy of Scott, with thanks
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