A MAN accused of cutting a woman's wrist with a razor blade has been acquitted by a jury after he told them he had actually tried to help treat her injuries.

Samantha Stubberfield had told Winchester Crown Court that she made two small incisions on her wrist with a blade in order to get sympathy from her boyfriend and then pretended to be asleep.

She claimed that another man, 25-year-old Darren Hawke, said: "She hasn't done it properly", after finding her with the injuries, and used the blade to make a deep cut on her wrist that needed 11 stitches.

But after retiring for less than an hour, a jury found Mr Hawke not guilty of inflicting the injury.

Mr Hawke, of Pinkerton Road, South Ham, Basingstoke, had told the jury he had found Ms Stubberfield in his flat already bleeding from her wrist and had wrapped the wound in a T-shirt.

He and her boyfriend, Colin Donald, had been out - leaving Ms Stubberfield alone in the flat - after a row in which Mr Donald said that he wanted to sleep with someone else.

Ms Stubberfield told the jury she inflicted the two small injuries on her own wrist as she wanted her partner to return and feel sorry for her.

But she claimed to have opened her eyes and found Mr Hawke kneeling in front of her with a razor blade and said she saw a lot of blood.

Mr Hawke, who in a police interview described the allegation as a "load of rubbish", told the jury when he came into the flat he saw Ms Stubberfield lying on the sofa, her left arm hanging down and blood coming from it.

He said he got a T-shirt to stop the blood and tied it to her wrist and she then got up and asked what he was doing. He replied he was trying to help her.

He denied causing her any injury.

The jury found him not guilty of a charge of wounding with intent and an alternative charge of unlawful wounding.

First published: Wednesday, May 18, 2005