A knife-wielding thug who stabbed a man five times after breaking into his home has been jailed for over two years.
Bradley Scott Rabjohns, 27, from Northallerton, broke into the house in Brough with St Giles, Catterick Garrison, and subjected the victim to a gruesome attack, York Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Glenn Parsons said that Rabjohns and another armed man burst in just after midnight on August 31, 2020. They subjected the named victim to a vicious attack in which he was stabbed five times to his stomach, buttocks and arm.
The victim’s neighbour heard the commotion and went out to investigate.
“(The neighbour) saw a male run out from the house and jump into a small, silver Ford car,” added Mr Parsons.
The neighbour gave police the registration number but, rather than driving off, Rabjohns drove onto an estate, turned around and picked up his sidekick, who can’t be named for legal reasons at this stage.
Rabjohns and his cohort were arrested days later when police found Rabjohn’s DNA on the victim’s damaged T-shirt.
Police seized his mobile phone on which they found messages between Rabjohns and his sidekick which were sent just hours after the attack. In one of the messages, Rabjohns told the other man: “Need story straight.”
Minutes later, he sent another message saying: “Bro, ring me and I’ll send you a grand.”
In the early hours of the following morning, Rabjohns sent a message to a family member saying: “I’ve done something stupid. Forget about me. I’m nasty.”
When officers arrested him at his home on September 1, Rabjohns had the washing machine on, ostensibly to clean the clothes he had been wearing at the time of the attack.
He was taken into custody but refused to answer police questions. The prosecution was further hampered by the fact that the victim declined to co-operate with the case, which meant that evidence about his injuries was scant.
Mr Parsons said this meant that the Crown was unable to provide evidence of the gravity of his injuries suffered as there was only proof about where the stab wounds were inflicted.
Rabjohns was initially charged with aggravated burglary and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm but denied the allegations.
He was due to face trial in May but pleaded guilty on the day to an alternative count of wounding without intent. The aggravated burglary and GBH charges were ultimately dropped by the prosecution on a “pragmatic” basis.
Mr Parsons said the victim gave details of the attack in a police interview but thereafter didn’t co-operate with the prosecution case and neither he nor a main witness turned up in court to give evidence against Rabjohns.
Rabjohns, who worked as a builder, finally appeared for sentence today (June 3) when he also fell to be sentenced for two separate matters of breaching a community order and failing to provide a specimen for analysis, which he also admitted.
The community order was imposed at York Crown Court in June 2023 when Rabjohns was sentenced for a “grotesque” series of offences, including assaulting police officers, escaping from lawful custody and damaging vehicles on a construction site where he had turned up drunk for work. These offences occurred when he was on bail or under investigation for the knife attack.
In those offences, he threw a toolbox at his boss’s Ford Ranger, causing £2,483 of damage to the vehicle and a minor injury to the site manager who was hit on the arm by the projectile. Rabjohns then put a brick through the window of a digger, causing £366 of damage.
When police turned up at the work site, Rabjohns resisted arrest and kicked an officer in the legs, then kicked another in the thigh.
In a subsequent incident in 2022, police were called out to reports of a fight in Beech Grove, Northallerton, involving Rabjohns. He kicked one officer in the face and another in the chest as they tried to get him into the police van.
The following month, officers turned up at his home in Beech Grove to execute an arrest warrant after he failed to turn up in court. He initially complied but then asked officers to remove his handcuffs so he could put on his jacket “because it was so cold”.
As they did so, he pushed one of the officers and made a run for it, only to be detained after a short foot chase.
In another incident in January 2023, his own mother called police out to her home where Rabjohns had been “banging his head on doors and a wall”, causing damage. He was arrested but kicked one officer in the side of the head and another on the arm as they tried to get him into the police van.
Rabjohns, who had previous convictions for violence, received a two-year community order with a six-month alcohol-treatment programme, 100 hours of unpaid work and 30 days’ rehabilitation activity for those offences.
He breached the order by failing to turn up to unpaid work and rehabilitation sessions and through the commission of a further offence.
His offender manager said that Rabjohns had “made it clear that he had no intention of completing his unpaid work” after claiming that he worked all week and went to church on Sundays.
In December 2023, officers were called out to reports of a vehicle being driven erratically in Darlington town centre. Officers in a marked police car stopped Rabjohns who found him reeking of alcohol and “completely incoherent”.
He was so intoxicated that when police tried to breathalyse him at the roadside, he “didn’t seem able to understand how to work the machine”.
He was taken into custody but refused to get out of the police van which resulted in a “physical altercation” with officers. When they finally got him into the police station, he refused to come out of the cells and had to be “cut out” of his clothes.
Defence barrister Nicholas Hammond said that Rabjohns, a father-of-two, took responsibility for the stab wounds caused to the victim in Catterick village and was otherwise a hard-working man.
Judge Simon Hickey said that Rabjohns had stabbed a “vulnerable” victim in his own home during a “prolonged and persistent” attack.
He also noted that when Rabjohns was arrested for failing to provide a specimen, he was so drunk he couldn’t even provide his own name and address. His failure to provide a specimen was a “deliberate refusal”.
Rabjohns was jailed for two years for the knife attack and two months consecutively for failing to provide a specimen, but due to new early-release legislation he will serve less than half of that sentence behind bars before being released on prison licence.
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