''I'm sorry... I was protecting her': Man stabbed mum's partner to death following alcohol-fuelled row

A man who stabbed his mother's partner to death following an alcohol-fuelled argument told police: "I’m sorry… I was protecting my mum."

Dean Farrell, 22, was upstairs in his bedroom when his mum returned from a night out. She started arguing with 47-year-old Ian Bent.

Both Michelle Farrell and Mr Bent had been drinking.

During the row, Dean Farrell shouted at Mr Bent to stop being verbally abusive, to which he told him to come downstairs. Armed with an 18-inch combat knife hidden down his trousers, Farrell became involved in a violent struggle with Mr Bent.

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Mr Bent pushed him down onto the sofa before Farrell withdrew the knife and stabbed him four times to the neck and back, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Mr Bent was left with a deep wound to his neck which went through his jaw bone, as well as a large wound to his back and other cuts on his head and neck. He was taken to hospital but sadly died from his injuries.

When the police arrived shortly after, Farrell was found on the front step crying as he told officers: “I’m sorry.. I was protecting my mum.”

After pleading guilty at an earlier hearing to manslaughter on the grounds that he was acting in self defence but went ‘too far’, Farrell, of Droylsden was today (March 16) jailed for two years and seven months.

The court heard that Michelle Farrell and Mr Bent became a couple in 2016. Despite the relationship working well in the early days, it soon became ‘punctuated with arguments especially when the couple had been drinking’.

“They had split up twice over time but got back together again. There were three police call outs; in August 2017 when Mr Bent was alleged to