Police hurt in sword attack

A POLICE officer underwent surgery on his hand yesterday after being wounded by a man who ran amok with a Samurai sword.

The man attacked six officers with his three-foot long sword, lunging at vehicles as they arrived to tackle a reported domestic incident at a house in Offerton on the outskirts of Stockport, Greater Manchester.

A man was arrested after being involved in a collision with a police van at the scene. He is believed to have suffered a fractured skull and police were waiting to interview him in hospital.

The wounded officer, who had the tendons in his right wrist cut to the bone as he tried to fend off the swordsman, was operated on at Stockport's Stepping Hill Hospital. Five other officers, including one woman, were allowed home after treatment for shock.

Earlier, neighbours heard a row between the armed man and his ex-wife at a housewhere he was reported to have tried to attack her. When the first police team arrived at about 10pm on Monday, the man waved the sword above his head before raining blows on a van as an officer took refuge inside it. Then he lunged at other vehicles, smashing the windscreen of a patrol car as an officer sat in the driving seat.

Back-up officers arrived but the man chased them along the street and sliced into an officer's arm.

A third police team managed to restrain the man after the driver of a police van tried to use his vehicle to trap him. Five police vehicles were damaged.

Marjorie Bailey, 68, said she saw a man with a sword smashing down the door of a woman neighbour who has three children aged 11, nine and four. "When he broke the door down the woman ran into her next-door neighbour's house crying `help me, help me'." Mrs Bailey said that the woman and children were uninjured but the children were crying.