A woman who repeatedly cut a 17-year-old lad in the arm after saying ‘I feel like stabbing someone’, has walked free from court.

Amanie Gold stopped the teenager in the street and asked if he wanted to buy a butterfly knife, which a pal of hers had bought on the internet.

As the young mum spoke to the stranger she started to gently poke him to the left arm, getting lower and lower to the side of his body.

“Then she said ‘Sorry, I have ripped your tracksuit’,” Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court.

“He realised he was bleeding, he told his friends he was bleeding. He went home and his parents called an ambulance.”

Mr Meeke said the knife, which is illegal to possess, had been purchased online and the 20-year-old's friend was trying to sell it.

The weapon had been advertised for sale on Facebook, he said, and on Wednesday August 30 he had taken it to someone, but then decided they should not have it.

As they drove past the Pinehurst Community Centre their car stopped by a group of lads and Gold got out and asked the 17-year-old ‘Do you want to buy this?’

Mr Meeke said “His friends: they say that the defendant got out of the car and said ‘I feel like stabbing someone’.

“One said ‘I thought she was joking but I had more concerns when I saw she had a knife in her right hand and was doing jabs at my friend’s left side.”

The teenager was taken to hospital where his wounds were treated with steristrips and surgical glue.

Gold, of Trevello Road, Wichelstowe, pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm and possessing an article with a blade or point.

Richard Williams, defending, said his client had never been in trouble before though accepted she had smoked cannabis.

He said she had wanted to go into the catering profession and is not in work at the moment having had a baby last year who is being cared for by her father in America.

Mr Williams said she had been terrified about what may happen to her in court and had experienced suicidal thoughts as a result of it.

Passing sentence Judge Robert Pawson said “The public has understandable concerns about people having knives in the street because they kill people. They ruin lives.

“What you did was incredibly stupid, the most stupid thing in a sense was getting involved in the sale of an illegal knife.

“Everything I have read about you says that you have a huge amount of potential. You have a brother you look up to and is in work and from everything I have read is a good example.

“Most people caught with a knife like that go straight to prison.

“If you get in trouble, if you break the law again in the next two years you will come back here and you will go to prison.”

He imposed a 12 month jail term suspended for two years, told her to complete 40 days of rehabilitation activity requirement and a three month night time curfew.

“It is in the public interest, if at all possible, someone like you who has got real potential is rehabilitated rather than being put in custody,” he sad.