A North East man has been jailed for four and a half years for stabbing a Benalla man and leaving him with his intestines hanging out of his stomach.

Harrison Spencer, 27, faced Wangaratta County Court for sentencing after pleading guilty reckless conduct causing injury.

The court heard around 1am on 30 January 2025, Spencer attended a Jenson Court address armed with a golf club.

The victim, known to Spencer, appeared at the door after hearing him swing the club at a neighbouring flat.

Spencer then swung the club at the victim, who picked up a hockey stick and hit Spencer with it.

The 27-year-old dropped the golf club and stabbed the victim with a large kitchen knife.

Spencer fled and police arrived within minutes to find part of the victim’s bowel hanging out from a deep stomach wound.

He was airlifted, in a critical and life-threatening condition, to the Alfred Hospital, where the court heard 83cm of his bowel was removed and he was placed in an induced coma.

Spencer was arrested from his nearby aunt's address, telling police he had just got out of the shower and had done nothing.

The next day Wangaratta police arrested Spencer again after CCTV footage implicated him in the stabbing.

The court heard in the lead up to his crime, Spencer had spent the past four to five months homeless and abusing ice, GHB and alcohol.

In custody he told a psychologist he was embarrassed, ashamed and remorseful for his offending now he was sober.

Spencer had served 228 days in jail for a knife attack in 2021.

He applied to have the matter heard in the Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court in June 2025, but was rejected.

Spencer will serve three years of his sentence on a non-parole period and had been in jail for the previous 411 days.

Upon handing down his sentence, Judge Michael Cahill said he held some optimism for Spencer’s prospects of rehab, but the change had to come from within him.

“By the sentence I impose I must denounce your conduct, punish you, and deter you, and others, from committing crimes of the same or similar kind,” he said.