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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Blake Foden

Coffee cup attack lands 'misbehaving' stabber back behind bars

Jade Williamson outside court on the day he received his intensive correction order. Picture: Blake Foden

A man who stabbed a would-be cannabis customer in an act of excessive self-defence is back behind bars after breaching his community-based jail sentence by assaulting a "female person" with a coffee cup.

Jade Harley Williamson, 40, was given an 18-month intensive correction order by the ACT Supreme Court in April 2021 after he pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawfully causing grievous bodily harm.

He had previously spent 37 days behind bars on remand for that offence, which he committed outside the Charnwood home of his then-partner in May 2020.

Documents relating to that incident show Williamson intervened as his then-partner, a former drug dealer, argued with a "thoroughly drunk" man who had asked the woman to sell him some cannabis.

After Williamson armed himself with a knife, the victim punched him in the face and put him in a headlock.

The two combatants eventually fell over and wrestled on the ground, where the victim kneed Williamson in the mouth and punched him several times.

During what Justice Michael Elkaim called "exchanges of unpleasantries", Williamson stabbed the victim in the abdomen and cut his face with the knife.

As he spared Williamson a further period of immediate imprisonment last year, Justice Elkaim said the victim would be permanently scarred.

The case came back before Justice Elkaim on Tuesday, when he had to consider whether to cancel the remainder of the intensive correction order after Williamson breached it by committing another crime.

The judge said the 40-year-old had, in January, pleaded guilty to a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

That charge was laid over in incident that occurred in November 2021, when Williamson and someone of the opposite sex had an argument while sitting in a car.

"[Williamson], apparently in frustration, threw a coffee cup at the steering wheel," Justice Elkaim said.

"It broke into pieces, one of which flew into the female person's face, cutting her alongside her right eye. She fled from the scene.

"The police were called. The offender was arrested and taken into custody."

Justice Elkaim added that Williamson had, "in the period before his arrest, been misbehaving".

"He returned a positive urinalysis sample and he had acted inappropriately towards custodial and medical personnel," Justice Elkaim said.

The judge said he agreed with prosecutor James Melloy and Williamson's Legal Aid lawyer, Edward Chen, who both told the court the 40-year-old's intensive correction order should be cancelled.

"To ignore [the breach of the order] would be to condone criminal conduct," Justice Elkaim said.

The judge accordingly directed that Williamson serve the time that had remained on the order, which had been due to expire on October 12, behind bars at the Alexander Maconochie Centre.

The ACT Magistrates Court is due to sentence Williamson next Tuesday over the coffee cup assault.

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