Detectives remain baffled as to why a man attempted to murder his girlfriend in a frenzied knife attack before stabbing himself to death.
David Oldfield, 38, repeatedly stabbed his 33-year-old partner at their home in Poplar Square, Farsley, Leeds, earlier this month, before turning the knife on himself. He died a short time later.
Det Insp Lloyd Batley, of West Yorkshire Police’s Major Enquiry Team, said there had been no warning he would snap.
“There was no history of domestic violence. It came completely out of the blue,” he told the YEP.
Det Insp Batley was speaking after an inquest was opened into Oldfield’s death.
It heard emergency services had been called to the house in the early hours of Friday, October 5, after reports that a man and a woman had been injured.
Neighbours, who found the woman bleeding in the street, had called police. Officers had to use a Taser to disarm him when they arrived as he was refusing to drop the weapon.
Det Insp Batley told coroner David Hinchliff: “Mr Oldfield was transported by ambulance to Leeds General Infirmary. However, after an examination, his death was confirmed at 5.30am.”
A postmortem conducted the following day revealed Oldfield, a courier driver, had died of a stab wound to the neck.
The provisional cause of death was officially given as shock and haemorrhage due to a stab wound.
Det Insp Batley told the YEP the injured woman, who has not been named, was lucky to survive the horrific attack and was out of hospital.
He said: “We get people who die from a single stab wound, or a single punch even. She was very lucky.
“She’s doing as well as she can be under the circumstances and is recovering from what was obviously a very traumatic incident. We’re in the process of interviewing her about what happened.”
The inquest was adjourned pending further enquiries.