A Port Stephens man who held his housemate captive in a bedroom because he feared there were people waiting outside the home - and who stabbed a responding police officer in the face with a mechanic's tool - will be sentenced next month.
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Adam William Ross King, 42, pleaded guilty in Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday to assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, assaulting police causing actual bodily harm, and possessing a prohibited drug.
According to a statement of agreed facts, King walked into his female housemate's bedroom about 8am on September 1, 2023, and barricaded the pair of them inside with wooden chocks.
The frightened woman, who had let King move into a spare bedroom in her Anna Bay home about a month earlier, told him she needed to leave to use the bathroom, but King refused and said he was paranoid and that there were people waiting outside the house overnight.
He told her he was scared and called triple zero to ask for an ambulance.
Police and paramedics soon arrived and spoke with King through the front bedroom window, but he would not let them inside.
A male constable knocked on the back door and the woman's son let him in - the officer opened the front door for the other emergency service responders.
The constable and the woman's son pushed on the bedroom door, while King pressed from the other side.
As the woman moved towards the door, King threw her to the ground and yelled: "I'm going to stab her".
He apologised when he realised she had hit her head.
When the constable and the woman's son squeezed through the opening into the room, King slashed the woman's son across the nose using a "metal scribe" - a small pointed mechanic's tool.
As the constable came through the door and grappled with King, the officer was stabbed in the cheek with the object.
King was detained and briefly struggled, but soon began to apologise. He was taken from the scene and charged.
He told police he had consumed between 0.5 and 1 gram of the drug ice the previous day.
The constable suffered a "superficial laceration", which was treated at hospital.
King, who remains in custody, will be sentenced in Raymond Terrace Local Court on June 17.
Nick Bielby
Nick Bielby is a crime reporter who has worked as a journalist since 2011. Having joined the Newcastle Herald in 2017, he won a Walkley Award in 2019 with Donna Page for their investigation 'Dirty Deeds', which exposed the decades of illegal dumping of toxic material in and around a Hunter waterway.
Nick Bielby is a crime reporter who has worked as a journalist since 2011. Having joined the Newcastle Herald in 2017, he won a Walkley Award in 2019 with Donna Page for their investigation 'Dirty Deeds', which exposed the decades of illegal dumping of toxic material in and around a Hunter waterway.
