A MAN threatened to “carve up” his girlfriend during a row in a Musselburgh home.

Richard Mackie arrived at the woman’s home on the town’s Mansfield Place and soon began verbally abusing and threatening her.

Mackie, from Edinburgh, also threatened to kill the woman but she managed to flee the house and got help from a nearby neighbour.

She then called the police and on arrival officers arrested and charged 45-year-old Mackie.

Solicitor Stephen Mannifield told Edinburgh Sheriff Court that Mackie and the woman had agreed their “relationship is firmly over” and Mackie “does not want to resume it”.

Mr Mannifield said both parties had been shouting and swearing at each other during the incident in June.

The solicitor said this was Mackie’s first criminal conviction and there had been “no physical violence involved” during the argument.

Sheriff John Cook told Mackie that, as he had no previous convictions and due to the lack of any violence, he would defer sentence for him to be of good behaviour for six months.

Mackie will return to Edinburgh Sheriff Court for sentencing on January 18 next year.

Mackie admitted to behaving in a threatening or abusive manner by shouting, swearing, refusing to leave and uttering threats of violence towards the woman at an address at Mansfield Place on June 4.