78-year-old man jailed 8 yr 8 mo for attempted murder

A 78-year-old man has been sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison for attempting to murder his wife as she slept in their Darlington home earlier this year. Colin Finch pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced at Teesside Crown Court on June 10.

The court heard that Finch launched a frenzied stabbing attack on his partner of 33 years in March while she was asleep and recovering from a previous operation. The victim awoke during the assault. Finch waited approximately 30 minutes before calling an ambulance, during which call he confessed to the operator that he had tried to kill her. The woman was rushed to James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, where she underwent emergency, life-saving surgery.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the woman described the profound and lasting damage caused by the attack. She stated that Finch had broken their family and ruined both their lives. "When Colin was stabbing me, all I could think of was 'Why, why was he doing this? I thought he loved me,'" she said. "I had no idea what was going to happen." She detailed that while she had been recovering from an operation prior to the attack and needed...