A JURY is set to decide today (Thursday) whether a man is guilty of carrying out a deliberate car park stabbing.

Michael Roy John Bennison, 37, claimed he had got out of his car to go to a nearby Tesco branch in Sherburn-in-Elmet when three men confronted him.

Fearing that “something was about to happen” he reached into his pocket and took out a work multi-tool that he kept there to deter them, he alleged. But one of them had grabbed him and he had struck out with the weapon.

“I wasn’t trying to stab him, I was trying to get him off me,” alleged Bennison in the witness box at York Crown Court.

Bennison, of Tempest Road, Leeds, denies wounding with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm and carrying a blade in public. He admits wounding.

Bennison alleged he had gone to his girlfriend’s in Sherburn-in-Elmet after an incident in the Spar shop involving himself and the man he later injuried on August 27 to drop off some shopping.

He had then immediately returned to the town centre to buy something he had forgotten.

He denied prosecution witness accounts that he had given a look of “pure hatred” towards the alleged victim in the Spar store shortly before the car park incident and driven fast into the car park.

And he denied a suggestion from prosecution barrister Tom Storey that he was so angry at the way the alleged victim had spoken to him in the shop that he had decided to “teach him a lesson”.

He denied going back to find the alleged victim, whom he claimed had been high on drink or drugs. He admitted he had caused three wounds and broken his eye socket.

He claimed he had kneed the alleged victim in the face, when the other man had hold of him and as the two of them were getting up from the ground where they had fallen.

He denied prosecution witness accounts that he had kicked and stamped on the alleged victim's face.

He alleged he had got rid of the multi-tool and changed his clothes immediately afterwards because he had panicked.

The trial continues.