A COUPLE who caused horrific knife wounds to a man during a drinking session have been jailed for three years.

Alcoholics Karen Stuart and Kenneth White are likely to be free in less than a year because of time spent on remand.

The victim of their frenzied attack, Brian Haynes, died seven months later after drinking himself to death.

Maidstone Crown Court heard that all three were staying in accommodation in Meadowbank Road, Chatham.

Paul Cavin, prosecuting, said it was not easy to work out what happened on November 14 last year because it was against a background of a "fog" of alcohol.

Mr Haynes had recently moved to the address from Sittingbourne after being given a community rehabilitation order for assaulting his wife.

Mr Cavin said Mr Haynes did not know anybody in the bedsits and Stuart, 38, said she would go shopping with him in Chatham.

They met up with White, 34, and eventually went back to 50-year-old Mr Haynes’s flat. All three became very drunk.

Mr Cavin said an argument started after a suggestion that Mr Haynes had made advances to Stuart. She then attacked Mr Haynes with a knife as White punched him.

The victim managed to escape from the flat and called the police from a phone box.

Judge Warwick McKinnon said looking at photographs of his injuries, it was amazing he got out of the flat.

He was taken to Medway hospital where he was treated for multiple wounds. One to the back of his neck was 12cm deep.

"It is another case where the victim could have easily ended up a corpse, if the knife had gone somewhere else," said the judge.

Passing sentence he added: "Looking at these horrible injuries, he was fortunate not to be killed. I treat you both equally."

The pair were initially charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, but their pleas to the lesser charge of unlawful wounding was accepted.