A WOMAN who armed herself with two knives before attacking a drug dealer when he tried to collect a debt has been jailed.

Sarah Louise Pearson, inset, and her partner smoked 20 joints of cannabis a day and ran up a £70 debt to one of the dealers who provided them with the drug, said John Boumphrey, prosecuting.

When the man arrived to collect it, he and Pearson argued outside her block of flats before she went back to her third-floor flat, brought out two kitchen knives and then made two attempts to stab him.

One of the stabs made a cut of less than 1cm which was sutured in hospital. In a victim impact statement, the dealer told police that in the aftermath of the attack, he “felt lucky to be alive”, said Mr Boumphrey.

On her 38th birthday, Pearson, of Fossway, York, was jailed for 40 months at York Crown Court.

She had earlier pleaded guilty to wounding the dealer with intent and carrying a knife in public.

Mitigating, Fiona Clancy said the case “was a unique set of circumstances”.

Pearson was a vulnerable person who had mental health problems including borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder and anxiety. Although she did have a record, she had not been before the courts for 13 years.

Mr Boumphrey said the dealer and Pearson spoke on the phone and exchanged insulting text messages on January 2 about the drug debt.

Pearson and her partner offered to pay in two instalments over two weeks, but the dealer didn’t accept that and at 9.15pm on January 3, he arrived at their home, where Pearson was waiting outside.

The dealer didn’t initially realise he had been stabbed and continued to attack Pearson, but her partner intervened.

He told police the attack had left him scared and unwilling to talk to people in future. He also had difficulty lifting objects or bending.