A MAN who carried out a street stabbing over a £20 drugs debt, and then went on the run for four years, has been jailed for nine and a half years.

Shah Alam, 24, has been locked up after Preston Crown Court heard how he knifed another man on a Burnley street over the money.

The injured man, David Paul Heyworth, suffered a cut artery when stabbed in the abdomen after an incident on the corner of Canning Street and Gordon Street.

The court was told that Mr Heyworth’s death was only averted due to prompt resuscitation and surgery.

Alam, of no fixed address, had denied wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm over the attack in February 2005, but was convicted by a jury.

After being charged with the incident Alam failed to answer bail, and was only found in August after being arrested on the Isle of Wight on suspicion of robbery and actual bodily harm.

He was given a two year sentence for that last month, and his nine and a half year term will not start until that sentence has finished.

The court heard that days before the stabbing Alam had threatened Mr Heyworth with a knife over the debt, but he did not report it to the police as he didn’t believe Alam would ever stab him, and thought they could sort it out between them.

It was not unusual for the defendant to be carrying a knife and the judge accepted he had not gone out intending to stab his victim.

The knifing took place after Mr Heyworth had called out to and chased Alam, to find out what had happened to his hoover, and the defendant instinctively stabbed out at him.

Judge Heather Lloyd told Alam: “You stabbed him for the sake of a £20 debt in broad daylight, in the street where you both lived.

“It is only by the skill of the surgeons that Mr Heyworth is alive today.

“He and you are lucky that he didn’t due.”