A teenage boy who stabbed a 15-year-old in the chest during a fight near Moor Park came within millimetres of killing the victim.
The teenager was 14 at the time of the attack in March last year and has since turned 15.
He used a kitchen knife to stab the other boy, inflicting a deep wound in his victim’s lower chest/upper abdomen area which caused a significant laceration of the liver.
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The knife missed the boy’s aorta by millimetres – had it made contact the injury was likely to have been fatal.
The defendant – who cannot be named because of his age – had arrived in the area with another teenager, while the victim had a friend with him.
A video recovered from one of the group’s phones showed the defendant carrying a large stick which he used to hit the victim with causing the stick to break.
He then pulled out a knife and stabbed his victim. An audible thud could be heard on the video as the blade entered the boy’s chest.
Three police officers who were first on the scene after a 999 call was made administered first aid to the victim who was bleeding heavily.
The ambulance service then arrived to continue first aid with the boy taken to Manchester Children’s Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery.
The defendant and his friend left the scene. He was arrested at 11.50pm that night.
Enquiries found that after the fight, he had called round at the home of a friend in the Deepdale area of Preston.
CCTV showed him arriving in a blue tracksuit top and grey trousers – the clothes he had worn when carrying out the stabbing – before he left the property wearing a pink t-shirt and black shorts.
The friend burnt the tracksuit top and trousers on a barbeque in the garden.
Appearing at Preston Crown Court for sentence on Tuesday (6 January) after pleading guilty to Section 18 wounding with intent at an earlier hearing, the boy was given three years and four months youth detention.
Det Con Ben Clegg of Preston CID, said: “This case shows the dangers of knife crime.
“A teenager suffered a serious stab injury to his chest. Had the knife entered him just millimetres away from where it did, this would have been a murder investigation.
“There is no excuse for anyone to carry a knife.”
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