A man who stabbed a noisy neighbour twice in the back was today told by a judge he was lucky not to have killed him.

Oliver Kenny, 20 – who was himself stabbed as a teenager – was sentenced to three years in a young-offender institution after Bradford Crown Court was told he was on bail at the time for causing actual bodily harm to another man.

Kenny, of Hirst Wood Road, Shipley, was told by Recorder David Wilby QC: “Given the present view of the populace and Government in relation to the use of knives, I have to pass a significant sentence.”

Prosecutor Heather Weir said Kenny’s neighbour would have friends round and socialise in the garden.

At 10pm on Sunday, July 19, the defendant heard raised voices in the neighbouring garden and asked them to keep the noise down.

He went outside and there was a confrontation, with the neighbour climbing over a three-foot fence and taking hold of Kenny by the scruff of the neck.

Kenny punched his neighbour several times to the side and arm. The victim felt something warm running down his side and realised he had been stabbed.

He was taken to hospital and had a drain inserted into his lung. He suffered two significant wounds, one of them to his rib which pierced his lung. He spent four days in hospital.

*For more on this story see Friday's T&A