A MAN stabbed a Good Samaritan who tried to stop a family argument after Carlisle’s annual Fireshow.

Petrified children who were among thousands leaving the annual Bitts Park event at around 8.15pm on November 2 saw Kevin John Whelan lash out at grandfather Alistair Elliott.

Mr Elliott had been walking in the Shaddongate area with his daughter and her two young children when he saw 35-year-old Whelan - who’d been drinking - behaving aggressively and assaulting his own partner, Elizabeth Adshead.

As Mr Elliott calmly intervened in a brave bid to stop further trouble, Whelan squared up to him before using a knife to stab the grandad through his clothing and into his shoulder.

“He felt a piercing sensation and he very quickly realised he had been stabbed,” prosecutor Gerard Rogerson told Carlisle Crown Court. “Blood was pouring from the wound.”

He suffered a puncture injury which was cleaned in hospital, was left “shocked and stunned” and had reflected on a lucky escape.

Mr Elliott’s daughter had heard Whelan say “I will slit your throat”, and described her children being left “petrified and very upset” by what they saw.

Mr Elliott had later said: “I couldn’t really believe it had happened. I know that knife crime is in the news a lot but this is so far from how you expect it to happen.

“We were just a little family out at a bonfire and fireworks display. By trying to help another family out I have been hurt.”

Whelan, who’d been drinking, was arrested at a Carlisle address several hours later. He admitted unlawfully and maliciously wounding Mr Elliott, assaulting Miss Adshead and illegal weapon possession.

Whelan, of Heywood Road, Ashton-on-Ribble, Preston, was described as “remorseful” by his lawyer, Sean Harkin.

“I asked the defendant why he behaved in the manner he did,” said Mr Harkin. “He was quite candid in saying it was down to alcohol and underlying issues with anger which he has sought to address.”

Whelan was jailed for 26 months by Judge Julie Clemitson.

Judge Clemitson said of the stabbing: “It was an astonishing action for anyone to have done in a public place, with children, when a man was simply trying to stop a family argument escalating.”