Woman’s throat slit in horrific attack
Reporter: JENNIFER HOLLAMBY
Date published: 16 April 2009
Domestic abuser jailed for 11 years
A MAN who tried to kill his pregnant girlfriend by slashing her throat in a horrifying attack had been jailed for 11 years.
Joe Cready (26) left his victim with sickening injuries after he sliced her neck from the back of her left ear to almost her right ear following years of abuse.
Cready, of Stockport Road West, Stockport, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Rachel Shaw.
His 24-year-old victim, who has two children, aged five and eight, had been trapped in a violent, on-off relationship with Cready for three years, during which time she discovered he had fathered a child with another woman.
In August last year the victim got back with Cready after one of their break-ups and they moved into a rented house in Bredbury.
On August 24 the victim invited friends over to help her decorate the house but found Cready had been snorting cocaine and drinking heavily.
As the night progressed, Cready became verbally abusive and a scuffle broke out between Cready and some of the people in the house. He also broke the victim’s laptop, which had been brought by her father as a gift.
The victim told Cready it was over and that she would be moving back in with her mother.
She then went to sleep on an airbed downstairs and awoke the next day to find a decorating knife, a laptop and a recent positive pregnancy test lined up next to the bed.
Cready was on the bed and the victim suspected what he was about to do.
He jumped on top of her and said: “I can’t live without you so I am going to kill you”, before plunging the knife into her neck and slashed her throat from left to right.
The victim managed to kick Cready off and ran out of the house, where she stopped a passer by, who called an ambulance. She was rushed to hospital and had emergency surgery to her neck, with doctors telling her that if the wound had been a millimetre either way she would have died.
She has since suffered nerve damage affecting the feeling in her left side of her face and she also lost the baby.
Det Sgt Richard Chapman, from Stockport CID, said: “This is an absolutely horrific — and tragic — case.
“This young woman was subjected to years of domestic abuse that eventually culminated in Cready trying to slit her throat and kill her.
“When this frightened young woman was holding her neck, she really thought she was going to die and even wanted to use a passer-by’s mobile phone to call her mum and say her goodbyes.
“Just thinking about it sends a chill down your spine, so you can only imagine the terror the victim felt thinking she would never see her two children again.
“I also hope this case encourages anyone who is suffering domestic abuse to come forward and break the circle of violence before it gets so bad their lives are at risk. Please, do not suffer in silence.”
