A KNIFE-WIELDING attacker who pursued a man from a bus stop and stabbed him in the chest has been jailed for seven years.

Ross Hunter told Aaron Hogan: “I am going to kill you,” before chasing him along Cliffe Lane West in Baildon and delivering a blow with a kitchen knife as he climbed a gate to get away.

Hunter, 26, of Sissons Road, Middleton, Leeds, was angered by a Facebook friend request that Mr Hogan had sent to his girlfriend, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

He pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to unlawfully and maliciously wounding Mr Hogan with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm and possessing a kitchen knife as an offensive weapon.

Prosecutor Rupert Doswell said that Mr Hogan was waiting at a bus stop at about midday on October 31 last year when Hunter got out of the passenger seat of a Ford Fiesta.

He pointed at Mr Hogan, threatened to kill him and pursued him across a garden and down the side of a house.

Mr Hogan was climbing a high gate blocking his escape route when Hunter caught up with him and stabbed him.

Mr Hogan dropped on to a shed roof, Mr Doswell told the court. He heard what he thought was the sound of dripping water and realised it was his blood. He was in immediate pain and collapsed in the street after banging on a house door to raise the alarm.

Hunter had been driven off in the Ford Fiesta, Mr Doswell said.

The attack was witnessed by several members of the public, including a girl who burst into tears.

Mr Hogan later discovered that Hunter had been issuing threats against him because of the Facebook friend request.

Mr Doswell said that Mr Hogan just wanted to chat to the young woman, who was a previous girlfriend, but the defendant got “the wrong end of the stick.”

Mr Hogan feared he was going to die from the attack. He spent eight days in hospital, lost half of his liver and needed a blood transfusion. He developed fluid on his lungs and was left with a 12 inch scar.

In the weeks after the attack, he was unable to work and suffered nightmares.

Mr Hogan said in his victim personal statement that he was “a nervous wreck.”

“I feel like I am always looking over my shoulder,” he stated.

Hunter had previous convictions for a string of street robberies, including an attack on a male outside Shipley Railway Station. The victim was punched and kicked in the group assault and his rucksack stolen.

Hunter’s barrister, Peter Hampton, said he had stayed out of trouble for the past eight years.

He had insight into what he had done and was genuinely remorseful.

“It was one incident, with one blow, from a man who since 2011 seems to have moved away from any offending,” Mr Hampton said.

The Recorder of Bradford, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC, said of the stabbing: “It involved the use of a weapon with the intention to cause the sort of harm that inevitably arises from a chest wound.”

But Hunter deserved full credit for his early guilty plea, cutting the jail term from its double figures starting point.

“Any less would be an offence to the victim and society. Any more would be unfair to you,” the judge said.

He warned Hunter that if he committed any more similar offences he could be facing life imprisonment.