Telford wife, 58, who drank six bottles of wine and threw knives at her husband sent on alcohol rehabilitation programme

Hannah Davison, aged 58, had been drinking since 8am before launching the knives at her husband and telling him: “I want to cut your f***ing head off”.

Shrewsbury Crown Court was told that Davison and her husband John have been married since 2003 and had a “happy marriage”, but her drinking caused issues, especially since the Covid pandemic.

On July 10 this year, Davison had been drinking since early in the morning at home in Telford before her husband went to play a game of golf.

He returned at around 3pm to find his wife asleep on the sofa.

Later on, Davison woke up and drank another four bottles of wine.

She asked her husband for a seventh but he refused.

Davison went into the kitchen and began to throw items at her husband, including two kitchen knives and two steak knives.

“She was waving the knives, saying ‘I want to cut your head off, you’re a f***ing c***,” said Dylan Wagg, prosecuting.

She followed him upstairs with a knife and told her husband: “It’s going in your neck,” before stabbing the bedding he was lying on.

Davison threw a lamp across the room and said: “I’m going to f***ing kill you.”

Mr Davison recorded some of the incident, phoned the police and barricaded himself in a bedroom before officers arrived at about 9pm.

Davison was interviewed by police the next day and told officers she did not remember threatening her husband or holding a knife.

She did accept that she had drunk “far too much” and that she “didn’t want to hurt” him.

'I can't go through this again'

Mr Davison said he was left “feeling down” after the incident and that his wife has suffered from alcoholism, which “started off the back of Covid”.

“I just want her to get better and come back home,” he said.

He said he was “frustrated” that she “can’t move forward herself” and that there is “no reasoning with her”.

“I can’t go through this again,” Mr Davison said.

Davison, of Cordingley Way Donnington, Telford, pleaded guilty to making threats to kill and threatening someone with an offensive weapon.

She has two previous convictions for four offences - all after the pandemic, including threats to kill and possession of an offensive weapon. She was previously given an alcohol treatment requirement and ordered to carry out sessions with the probation service.

Danny Smith, mitigating, said Davison has alcohol dependency syndrome, but while getting sober in prison over the last four months has “fully engaged”, and been trusted to help others battling addictions.

Recorder John Benson KC questioned whether a community punishment would be effective, given the fact she drank to excess and became violent again after previously doing well on a community order.

Mr Smith said being in jail had been the “sea change” for Davison, and provided the “firebreak” she needed.

Recorder Benson told Davison, who joined the hearing from Eastwood Park prison as her husband sat in the court’s public gallery: “You threw knives at him and threatened him in the most offensive, abusive and aggressive terms. A threat to kill is a very serious offence. There is a history of violence towards the victim.”

He handed Davison a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.

Davison was also ordered to do a 12-month alcohol rehabilitation programme, 26 sessions of the “building better choices” programmes and 30 rehabilitation activity days.