A 20-YEAR-old man was locked up for 12 years and his teenage brother for four-and-a-half years after a ‘pop man’ was hit with a metal cosh and knifed in the stomach.

Judge Rhys Rowlands said Chad Daniels, of Balmoral Grove, Rhyl, and Brad Daniels, 18, of East Parade, Rhyl – who were convicted by a jury of wounding with intent on veteran confectionery salesman William Clarkson last summer, after moving from Walsall – had been determined to start throwing their weight around.

Judge Rowlands told the brothers at Caernarfon Crown Court that Mr Clarkson was “a thoroughly decent man, sadly a very marked contrast to the two of you”.

The older brother was also found guilty of wounding his aunt by slashing her head at her Rhyl home and trying to rob a stranger in the street.

Defence counsel said the brothers had endured difficult childhoods.

Judge Rowlands said Brad Daniels had a“fascination” with knives and his stabbing of Mr Clarkson followed the teenager telling others that no-one was going to mess with him that night.

Prosecuting counsel Richard Edwards said Mr Clarkson now had swelling where he had been stabbed and had been diagnosed with a hernia.

Chad Daniels had been out of custody on licence at the time of the violence.

The jury heard how Mr Clarkson was hit over the head and then stabbed to the stomach as he came to the end of his rounds late one night last summer.

He said that he was about to see his last customer before going home and then go on holiday when the incident happened.

Mr Clarkson said he pulled up in Rhydwen Drive, Rhyl and was about to knock on a regular customer’s door just before 11pm on August 25 when a man approached and asked if he could buy some sweets from his van.

As he was serving the man at the back of the vehicle, he said that he heard the front door of the van close and when he popped his head around saw two men walking away.

Fearing that they had taken something from the vehicle, he called out to them.

But they turned, approached him, and one struck him to the head with an extendable baton, cutting his head open, he told the jury.

A second man then approached and Mr Clarkson said that he believed that he had been punched in the stomach.

But it turned out that he had been stabbed.

The lining of the stomach wall had been pierced and he would need future surgery for a hernia, he explained.

The prosecution said the brothers had gone “on a spree of serious violence”.