A WIGTON man who stabbed a fellow pub customer in the face told the police officers sent to arrest him: “I hope he’s died because if he hasn’t – unlucky.”

The comment was recorded on body cameras worn by officers who were trying to persuade 39-year-old Scott Topping to come out of his home shortly after Robert Pattinson was stabbed in King Street, Wigton, on the night of Friday, April 12.

The defendant used such severe force when he stabbed the 21-year-old that the blade sank in to a depth of five inches, coming to rest to just millimetres from his carotid artery.

Doctors said Mr Pattinson was lucky to survive.

Topping, of Mulligan’s Court, Wigton, has admitted intentionally causing his victim grievous bodily harm but he denies that he intended to murder him.

On the second day of Topping’s Carlisle Crown Court trial, prosecuting barrister Jeremy Grout-Smith showed the jury video footage of the stand-off between the defendant and police after the stabbing as officers tried to persuade him to leave his flat.

The defendant repeatedly said he was going to die, and that the police would have to shoot him if they went into his home.

At one point, Topping was heard asking whether Mr Pattinson had died. “I don’t want to know if he hasn’t died,” said Topping. He insisted he was not afraid of dying.

At times yelling and swearing at the officers outside his home, he told them: “I’ll do what I want. What are you going to do? Nothing. You’ll have to shoot me.”

He added: “You’ll have to shoot me or I’ll stab people.”

Topping finally obeyed a police instruction to throw the knife he had with him out of the window before he went upstairs to collect his dog. He then emerged through the front door, his hand bleeding from an injury he had sustained after breaking his window.

As he was being led away, he told the officers: “Make sure that dog’s all right.”

Further footage shows Topping after his arrest, sitting in police van’s cage, and laughing as he is formally arrested and given his legal rights by one of the police officers involved.

Earlier in the trial, Mr Grout-Smith had read from a statement made by Mr Pattinson’s mother Lisa Dixon, who was punched in the head by Topping outside the Throstle’s Nest Pub in King Street, where she had been having a night out with her family.

She recalled how earlier in the evening the pub’s landlady had been “on pins” because Topping was there. In her statement, Mrs Dixon said of the landlady: “She told me that he [Topping] is always causing trouble.

“She had refused to serve him at Christmas time because of the way he behaved.”

The jury also heard from Home Office pathologist Stuart Hamilton.

He examined the medical evidence arising from Mr Pattinson’s knife wound, caused as the kitchen knife penetrated through his cheek bone and into the base of his skull.

Some 12.5 cm of the blade was buried in his face and head.

The blade came to rest just millimetres from Mr Pattinson’s carotid artery, one of the three arteries supplying blood to the brain. The injury could readily have caused a fatal bleed in the victim’s brain, said the doctor. To stab somebody so deeply through those bony structures of the face would have required “severe force,” he said.

Mr Grout-Smith told the jury that Topping, who confirmed that he will not testify in the trial, had admitted a common assault on Mrs Dixon; threatening her husband Neil Dixon with a knife; having an offensive weapon – a knife – in a public place; and affray.

The barrister also read from a report by drug expert Damien Singleton, confirming that the defendant had used cannabis and cocaine on the night when he stabbed Mr Pattinson. The expert said a high dose of cocaine may cause paranoia and bizarre behaviour.

The trial continues.