A KNIFEMAN who rode around York on a bike in a “state of rage” before robbing a group of students has been jailed for nearly seven years.

Terry Greenwood, 44, cut a tendon and artery on a student’s thumb, injured a second and tried to rob a third, said Heather Gilmore, prosecuting at York Crown Court.

The victims were walking home together along Piccadilly at the end of a night out together when Greenwood cycled up behind them at 3.30am on March 2.

He pushed one student against a wall and held a four-inch knife to his chest and then his chin with the words: “You are being robbed.”

He made a small cut in the 20-year-old’s chin before getting his wallet and turning on the other two.

He cut the thumb of a second student, also aged 20, as he grabbed his wallet with the hand holding the knife. The third student, 19, persuaded him she didn’t have her purse on her.

He rode off and shortly afterwards used two of the cards he had stolen in the Spar shop in Bridge Street.

Greenwood had been arrested some hours earlier on suspicion of shoplifting.

Judge Andrew Stubbs QC told him: “By the time you were eventually released you had worked yourself up into a state of rage.

“You armed yourself with a knife and bike and rode off into the middle of York looking for people to rob.

“You found a group of students doing absolutely no harm to anyone and you decided they would be your target.”

Greenwood, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to two robberies, an attempted robbery, wounding one of the students, bank card fraud and carrying a knife in public.

He was jailed for six years and nine months, his second sentence for robbery.

In 2008, he was jailed for 45 months for using a samurai sword in a foiled robbery at the Co-op store in York Road, Acomb.

For him, Ian Hudson told the court Greenwood was a heroin addict, the street robberies were out of character and Greenwood didn’t know why he had done them.

In victim personal statements read to the court, the students said they were now wary about going out in York city centre at night and the victim with the injured thumb had suffered lasting numbness.

Ms Gilmore said police arrested Greenwood on March 1 on suspicion of shoplifting in Marks and Spencers on February 24. Sometime after midnight on March 2 they released him and he returned to the hostel for the homeless where he was living.

At 3.20am, he left, telling staff he was “wound up and couldn’t sleep”. He was arrested for the robberies at 5.22am in Spurriergate.