The grieving father “attempted to kill a man with a machete” in an “eye-for-eye attack” outside the gym after his 18-year-old son drowned

A grieving father tried to kill a man he blamed for his son’s death in a brutal “eye for an eye” machete attack, a court heard yesterday.

Samson Price, 48, nearly managed to kill Patrick Brown in the ‘pre-planned’ attack outside a Northwich, Cheshire, gym in September 2021, Chester Crown Court has been told.

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Price had been tracking Mr Brown for days, blaming him for the death of his son Samson Jr, 18, who drowned in a pond in Wigan in October 2020.

He waited for Mr. Brown outside the PureGym and rained five to six strokes down his body in daylight while horrified gym users looked on.

Mr Brown, who was 20 at the time of the attack, was “millimeters from bleeding to death” but was saved by “sheer luck” and very quick medical attention after gym users called emergency services.

Father-of-two Price was furious that then-19-year-old Brown and two others were not charged with murder following Samson’s death last October.

They had been arrested on suspicion of murder after the friends went to a pond called the Westwood Flash in Wigan to take the hallucinogenic drug LSD.

The jury was told that Brown said they went camping and Samson Price Jr. started acting strange and disappeared.

He was later found drowned in the pond.

The jury was told no charges were brought, and police told the Price family in March 2021 that Samson’s death was an accident, which made the family “very angry.”

Prosecutor Simon Mills told the court: “This was a pre-planned attack on Mr Brown as he emerged from the gym where Price had been waiting for him with his concealed gun.

“He came very close to his goal of killing Patrick Brown. He inflicted numerous blows on his head, face, back and arms. He may very well have thought he had done enough to kill Patrick Brown.

“He ran away and was at large for three weeks before finally turning himself in at a police station in Wakefield, West Yorks.

“The defendant had a motive for carrying out this deadly attack. He blames Patrick Brown for his son’s death and was furious that the police didn’t charge him.

“Prosecutors claim this was an eye-for-an-eye case.”

Price accepts attacking Brown but denies trying to kill him.

He has admitted to causing aggravated assault but has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, but the charges are not accepted by prosecutors.

Mr Mills said that Price and his wife Rosanna “made it clear to police that they believed those arrested were responsible for their son’s death”.

He said that the “understandable grief and raw emotions of a grieving mother and father” were shown in messages the couple exchanged in the weeks leading up to the attack.

Price told his wife he considered himself dead after the death of his son.

He wrote: “These feelings are the hardest to deal with. Nothing will bring him back. It’s the futility, the injustice, and the injustice.”

His wife wrote: “We should be rowing and worrying about him going to all these festivals. I can’t imagine that he’s not here and I will never hear his voice.”

Price added: “We have nothing left to look forward to. I consider myself dead with Samson and honestly I don’t care what happens to me.”

His wife tried to “flip” him by reminding him that her daughter, Atlanta, needed him.

Price replied, “I’m not going to harm myself. I will most likely try to harm others. I don’t think I can handle the anniversary. I can’t see myself handling it. Not that.”

The process goes on.

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