A RETIRED public school teacher is preparing to welcome home the house-mate who slashed his throat as he lay in bed.

Recorder Timothy Roberts QC called the two men’s reunion a “disconcerting prospect” after hearing how David White, 20, used a 12-inch knife on the neck of 56-year-old David Hughes during an evening drinking with friends in their Clifton home.

But then he passed a 12-month jail sentence which means White will be released by the end of the month as he has been in custody since last August.

“I am delighted. I probably hurt him more than he hurt me,” Mr Hughes said outside court. “We both made mistakes. As it happens, when I hurt him, it was with words and they happen to be legal.” He is certain White will not attack him again.

“We just became very good friends. He is a very, very intelligent young man. He is interested in many of the same things as I am. I just think there is a high amount of potential and I don’t want it to go to waste.”

White, of Westminster Road, York, pleaded guilty to wounding Mr Hughes.

Alan Mitcheson, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said at York Crown Court the former English teacher retired, shaken, to bed after White had punched his face four times in an argument over White’s girlfriends.

The two men had been drinking with friends at their Clifton home.

Minutes later, White took the knife upstairs and made a two-inch superficial cut. He had left the house immediately afterwards, but was returning three hours later to apologise when he was arrested.

White started living with Mr Hughes in early January last year after the death of White’s grandmother and his expulsion from the hostel where he was living.

After the younger man was arrested, the pair exchanged more than 80 letters each. The older man constantly visited the younger in jail and told prosecutors, defence lawyers and a judge he wanted him to live with him again when he was released.