I hosted a harmless family dinner but we barely escaped with our lives… it turned into a bloodbath out of a horror film
IT should have been a cheerful family dinner, but mum Donna Kemp, 46, was left in a coma for three weeks after a brutal knife attack from a “black sheep” relative.
The mum of two and her sister Nikki Kemp, 42, were slashed with 3inch boning knife by their cousin David Fairweather, 44, over a fight about his parenting.
Gran-of-two Donna said: “What that man did is despicable, never in a million years could we imagine he would be capable of something like that.”
Fairweather, from Barnsley, was last week jailed for 16 years at Sheffield Crown Court after pleading guilty to two counts of section 18 wounding in the attack on Saturday December 12, 2021.
Donna told how the sisters invited their cousin – he called himself “the black sheep of the family” – round for drinks at her sister’s home in Barnsley, South Yorks, after they were chatting on Facebook.
She said: “He’d been in and out of prison, been involved with drugs and stolen from members of our family but we’d always got along okay, I thought he was a loser more than anything. I didn’t think he was dangerous.
“When we started chatting, I invited him round to our Nikki’s for drinks.”
He arrived at Nikki’s home, which was twinkling with Christmas decorations, at 6.30pm that evening.
Her two nephews – Nikki’s sons – Inness and Orryn Leggett, then nine and seven, had said hello and stuck around for a bit before going upstairs to play on their Xbox.
The trio had been having Christmas drinks together in the living room but progressed to the kitchen as the night wore on.
“The night had gone fine, we were having a drink and a laugh,” said Donna, “until we’d started to talk about family and it started to get a bit deep.”
Donna left to check in on the boys around midnight but when she was gone she heard the kitchen table scrape across the floor downstairs and a commotion start-up, she ran downstairs.
Nikki told how Fairweather had suddenly lunged for her throat across the kitchen table after she’d told him he wasn’t a great dad to his daughter due to stints in prison.
Donna said: “I came down to see him holding Nikki against the fridge, he had his arms outstretched and he was strangling her. I went into auto-pilot and pulled him off her and he fell to the floor, but when he got up from the floor he had a knife in his hands.
“He was punching and swiping away at us, and we were in a sheer panic. We were screaming and shouting out.
“I don’t even know what was going through my head, it all happened in such a blur.
“He was slashing away at the air, with some of the swings hitting us as we tried to protect ourselves, he hit our faces and arms and was millimetres away from Nikki’s jugular.”
Donna said her instincts, from her training working as a prison warden for eight years, kicked in and she used her skills without thought.
She continued: “All of a sudden I saw him reach the knife up high as if to come down and stab with it so I jumped in front of Nikki and we both crashed to floor.
“I just had to do my best to protect my sister. She’s my younger sister and she’s smaller than me – she’s only 5ft 2ins to my 5ft 6 ins – so I had to look after her. He was going to kill her.
He was slashing away at the air
Donna Kemp
“He stabbed me twice in the back and I turned to my side, which we learned in prison training, to be able to kick out at him to get him away, but he stabbed me in my side, hitting my internal organs and knocking me unconscious.
“He then stabbed Nikki twice in the back.
“He would have kept going were it not for the boys appearing at the entrance.
Nikki added: “I remember seeing their faces as white as a sheet, I could see they were scared stiff. You spend your life protecting your kids from watching horrible scenes on TV then they walked into the middle of their own horror film.
David threw down his knife after his young nephew Inness shouted: “I’m calling the police – you better leave.”
Leaping into action Inness and Orryn rang 999 making Donna tap her fingers on the floor to check she was alive.
Brave boys leapt into action
They were able to tell an emergency operator where they lived and describe how the women were laid in a pool of blood and how they thought they would die before they were taken to Sheffield General Hospital
And although Fairweather had fled – where he would later be found hidden in a local churchyard – Donna’s ordeal was to get far worse.
Her injuries were so severe they became infected, and she later developed sepsis and she underwent further surgery, with her then being placed in a coma for three weeks.
Donna suffered severe internal damage to her liver, pancreas, bowel, bladder and stomach from the stab to her side.
Devastatingly, Donna and Nikki’s mother died from cancer during this time.
After she came to, Donna spent five months in hospital recovering.
Nikki was released from hospital the next day – though she has never been able to return home and has had to sell her house.
Fifteen months later the four of them are trying to recover, with Donna being left with a heart condition. All four have flashbacks and nightmares and the boys are having counselling.
Nikki said: “The boys are so worried that David will come back to get them for calling the police but I’ve told them he’s not going to get out of prison.
“I live daily with the guilt of letting such a dangerous man into my home and no matter how much I tell myself it wasn’t our fault it won’t go away.”
But the family will be forever grateful to Inness and Orryn for their quick thinking actions – which ultimately saved the sisters’ lives.
Pride of Barnsley
The family, including Scottish dad, construction manager Malcolm Leggett, 47, have now entered them into this year’s Pride of Barnsley awards.
DS Becky Robinson, investigating, said: “Even as experienced detectives, there are some cases which will stay on your mind for a very long time to come – and this is one of them.
“This horrendous ordeal was the stuff of nightmares. The two sisters have been left with life-changing physical and psychological injuries, while the two little boys who watched their mum slip out of consciousness are also receiving ongoing support.
“Both boys were simply heroic. The nine-year-old boy told Fairweather he was phoning the police and to get out, which caused him to flee the address.
“On the phone, the boy told the ambulance call handler what had happened and described his mum and auntie as laying in pools of blood, not moving or talking. He told the call handler he was scared they were going to die.
“Despite the unimaginable situation, he was able to give enough detail for police and ambulance crews to attend the address quickly and both victims were rushed to hospital.”