A MAN who was stabbed attempting to defend his mother from a deranged knifeman remains in hospital.
Andrew Fields, 36, suffered knife wounds to his neck as he attempted to disarm Sebastian Mercante, who struck at the family home in Bradley, at around 6.30 on Friday evening.
Mr Fields’ wounds are not thought to be life threatening, but his mother, 66-year-old Carol Berry was killed in the attack.
Mercante, a 40-year-old Argentinian-born body builder from Tenerife, jetted into the UK on Friday, reportedly after his ex-partner Claire Tootill had asked for a divorce.
A former Holmfirth High pupil, she had gone on to study biology at Manchester Metropolitan University before meeting Mercante abroad.
He went to the Bradley Road address and launched the horrific attack.
Police launched a manhunt but in the early hours of Saturday Mercante’s body was discovered at the foot of a car park at Hanover Street in Manchester.
He had jumped from the eighth floor after leaving the message “F*** U Claire” in blood on the wall.
Soon after the discovery of his body, police said their investigation was at an end and that he was known to them.
Transactions on the internet auction site eBay show that Mercante, reportedly once a former member of the French Foreign Legion, had spent some of his final weeks amassing a deadly arsenal on the internet.
He paid £65 for a Blackhawk serrated knife from the “Sexy Weapon Co”, and also a pair of police-style riot gloves for use under body armour.
He had also bought a tool belt from a company that designed gun holsters and newspapers reported that after his death a “torture kit” of cable ties, a knife and a blunt instrument was discovered.
Coroners have not yet set any dates for the inquests.
