A JILTED girlfriend cut the man she loved in the arm and attacked him with a metal lamp when a love triangle erupted into a bedroom battle, a jury heard.

York Crown Court heard how love rivals Stacey Fletcher and Melanie Bradley fought in the room where the object of their affections, Mark Welch, had been sleeping minutes before.

He claimed that he had broken up with Ms Fletcher sometime before August 14.

But in the early hours of August 14, when he was with Ms Bradley, Ms Fletcher made a series of aggressive phone calls.

He fell asleep and woke to hear Ms Fletcher making a commotion downstairs. Shouting and hysterical, she came upstairs and swung a desktop light at his head.

Ms Bradley tried to drag Ms Fletcher off him, but the visitor picked up part of a broken ceramic mirror base and cut his arm with it. The wound needed eight stitches.

Ms Fletcher told the jury she had slept with Mr Welch on the night of August 12/13, and was annoyed when he did not respond to her text message of August 13: "Hope you don't regret last night - it meant a lot to me." She wanted to talk to him.

She spent the evening of August 13 drinking a bottle of wine at a friend's and made 17 phone calls in the early hours of August 14 to Mr Welch.

He told her to go away and diverted calls to his answer phone.

So she sent a text message: "Just to let you know, ring 999, I am on my way".

Shortly afterwards she arrived at the house in Ennerdale Avenue, Tang Hall, where he was staying, and climbed in through a window when she couldn't get in through the door.

When she entered his bedroom, Ms Bradley jumped on her and they struggled. Believing that Mr Welch was about to attack her as well, she picked up the lamp and swung it about in self-defence.

At one point, she was on her back on the bed with Mr Welch above her and heard something smashing.

Terrified, she picked up something ceramic and accidentally cut him in self-defence.

Then she managed to get free. She needed seven or eight stitches in hospital for a cut to her hand.

Fletcher, 22, of Tang Hall Lane, York, denied wounding Mr Welch and the jury acquitted her after nearly four hours in retirement.

Both she and Mr Welch said their relationship was an on-off one and that they had known each other since schooldays.

Updated: 09:18 Tuesday, May 02, 2006