A CONVICTED murderer tried to kill a fellow prisoner by stabbing him with a broken plate in a row over a cooking pot, Hull Crown Court heard.
John Mansfield, 52, severed an artery in John Orme's left arm when he stabbed him eight times in his cell at Full Sutton Prison on November 1, last year.
Mansfield denies attempted murder but has admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Giving evidence via a video link from the jail, Orme told a jury he thought he was going to die but believes his life was saved by another inmate.
That prisoner, Tony Maclean, forced the improvised weapon out of Mansfield's hand, removed him from the cell, and staunched the bleeding with a towel. Orme said it took "three or four minutes" for prison staff to arrive as the nearest officers were two landings away.
The court heard Mansfield and Orme had fallen out about a month earlier after Mansfield gave Orme's cooking pot to another prisoner.
The attack occurred just after 11am when Orme returned to his cell, D250 on D Wing, after finishing his duties for DHL, the company he worked for.
The jury was shown CCTV footage of Orme entering his cell, followed by Mansfield a few seconds later.
Orme said he was not expecting him and, asked to describe what happened next, he said: "I think he came in and said 'I've got some tobacco for you', which would have been to give me back for the pot he had stolen off me.
"He reached into his pocket and the next thing a plate came up and he started stabbing me with it."
Orme said he lost his balance as he tried to defend himself and ended up on the floor, where Mansfield stabbed him three times on the left side of his torso, twice in his abdomen and once in his shoulder, thumb and arm.
Orme said: "I thought I was going to get killed.
"If it hadn't been for the other prisoner running in the room I don't think he would have stopped."
The trial continues.
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