A Southampton man stabbed his brother after catching him having sex with his girlfriend, jurors heard.

Kevin Traves, 27, knifed David Ralph twice when he returned home to find the pair half-naked, Southampton Crown Court was told.

Mr Ralph spent three days in hospital recovering from a collapsed lung.

It was the men’s mum who had tipped off Traves that Mr Ralph and Victoria Hendricks were cheating on him behind his back, the court heard.

Marian Latta told the court that Mr Ralph had phoned her to confess what he had been doing.

“He said he was sorry and wished it had never happened,”

she said. “I told David that if he wasn’t going to tell Kevin, I would and he said it was going to come out sooner or later anyway.”

Mrs Latta said when she rang Traves and told him, he said he was going to take his head off but that was a figure of speech.

“He was angry. I told him: ‘Don’t get arrested, they are not worth it’,” she said.

Despite the incident Traves and Ms Hendricks were still together as a couple, the court heard.

Mr Ralph described to the court how Ms Hendricks had invited him for a drink at the flat she shared with Traves in Southampton where she tried to kiss him.

He told her he wasn’t happy about it and wanted to leave, but she threatened to tell his mother they had slept together the previous weekend.

“Had you?” prosecutor Siobhan Linsley asked. “Yes,” he replied.

Mr Ralph said he didn’t like being threatened and if anyone was going to tell his mother, he would. “I rang her and told her what had been going on, I said I had slept with Victoria.”

He said they were both quite drunk. “We went into the lounge, one thing led to another and we ended up having sex in the living room behind the sofa.”

Mr Ralph told jurors he then heard keys in the front door and ran into the kitchen wearing only a T-shirt.

“I thought it would be Kevin coming back,” he told the court.

“He walked into the kitchen and switched the light on. He began hitting me almost immediately.”

Mr Ralph described how his younger brother struck him about the face, head and body.

“I tried to put my arms up to weather the storm and protect my face. He just continued to hit me. He bit me on the left cheek and on my right forearm. Then it stopped and he left. I was quite bewildered why he left so quickly.

I walked out of the kitchen to see if Victoria was all right.”

He said he didn’t realise he had been stabbed until he saw his T-shirt had a lot of blood on it and an ambulance was called.

“Kevin came back from the hallway into the lounge and said:, ‘If you don’t die, I’ll come back and finish you off’,” Mr Ralph told the court.

“I replied: ‘If I do go, I’ll be waiting for you in hell’.”

Judge Patrick Hooton heard Ralph had suffered a collapsed lung after being stabbed in the front of his body and a superficial wound to the back.

Jurors heard that after being arrested Traves refused to comment during his police interview, but he would say he was acting in self-defence.

Traves, of Craven Walk, St Mary’s, Southampton, denies wounding with intent.

Proceeding