A FORMER heroin user was today behind bars waiting to learn his fate for slashing a man's face from ear to jaw.

Paul Maddison, 40, cut two arteries and left David Lloyd Ward's face partially paralysed when he pulled a blade across the victim's cheek, York Crown Court heard.

He first claimed he was acting in self-defence and later claimed the slash had been an accident.

But Mr Ward, 21, told a jury Maddison had attacked him without provocation when he tried to stop him from vandalising a car with a hammer in Chapelfields Road.

But they convicted Maddison of wounding Mr Ward with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm at the end of a nine-day trial.

Judge David Bentley QC adjourned sentence for a pre-sentence report and remanded Maddison in custody.

Maddison's sister Tracey, 35, was cleared of assaulting Mr Ward with a chisel. Both Maddisons live in Bramham Road, Chapelfields.

Mr Ward told the jury that immediately after he was wounded, he thought he was going to die.

He was rushed into the operating theatre and spent six days in hospital.

The attack initially left him unable to smile, close his mouth or raise his left eyebrow, but treatment with a pain relief machine was gradually relieving the paralysis.

He suffered from flashbacks and had sharp pains in his face when trying to get to sleep.

Ward was jailed for eight months on an unconnected matter while the jury was hearing evidence. And another man who involved Ward, 30, in his summer crime spree was locked up for five years.

Ward, of no fixed address, admitted burgling a house in Mattison Way and asked for a burglary in Watson Street to be taken into consideration.

Both crimes were committed with Kevin David Green, 22, of Grange Lane, Chapelfields, who admitted three house burglaries, asked for three more and a commercial burglary to be taken into consideration and admitted breaching a conditional discharge for theft.

Updated: 10:59 Saturday, July 28, 2001