A KNIFE attacker who lunged at her ex-partner as been locked up for seven months.

Donna Sherwin, 35, who had never been in trouble before, broke down as she was sentenced at Burnley Crown Court and was led away sobbing and still insisting she had not done what victim David Rushton claimed.

The hearing was told Sherwin had pulled a knife on Mr Rushton as he was walking his dog in Nelson, last September.

Sherwin had alleged she had put the knife in her pocket and it had fallen out of her jeans when a woman she had claimed had been with Mr Rushton had thrown her against a wall and threatened to kill her.

She claimed she had not taken the knife out at any stage.

Mr Rushton told the court Sherwin had been saying he was going to get his head ripped off and that he was ‘a dead man’.

Sherwin, of Chapelhouse Road, Nelson, had earlier admitted possessing an offensive weapon.

Martin Hackett, said she acted out of character and urged the court to pass a suspended sentence.

Sherwin had lost both her parents within days of each other in January last year, and had, struggled to cope.

Judge Beverley Lunt said Sherwin bore a grudge against Mr Rushton, she had deliberately gone out looking for him to confront him and had taken the knife with her.

The judge said the defendant had told ‘a pack of lies’ about what went on and had tried to blacken Mr Rushton's name.

She said: “The sentence has to punish you for what you did and it must deter others from going out on the street with a knife.”