'Joke' led to brutal family attack

A mother and her two sons launched a terrifying attack on the white boyfriend of her daughter after his joke comment was misunderstood as a racial slur, a court heard.

Gas engineer Matthew Round, 25, was on holiday in Florida with sweetheart Raylene Bright and her croupier brother Richard, 32, when the remark was made. She said in jest to her boyfriend as the trio relaxed in a bar at the start of their two-week sunshine break: "Are you getting me a drink, white master?" He replied: "Yes, my black slave."

That innocent, light-hearted exchange triggered a frightening chain of events that has forced both of them to adopt new identities in a different part of the country under strict orders never to contact relatives and friends from their former life in Wolverhampton.

It also put Raylene's mother Burnella, 54, and brother Richard behind bars, with police now searching for her other brother Charlton "Charlie" Barrett, aged 34. He fled after the brutal beating that left Matthew close to death and ruined the lives of the victim's 25-year-old girlfriend and her family.

Judge Nicholas Webb told Wolverhampton Crown Court yesterday: "Richard got the wrong end of the stick and took something to be insulting which was never intended. And he allowed it to fester."

He told his mother and brother about the holiday remarks on his return to their home in Wolverhampton last September.

They went straight to the home of Matthew and Raylene in Torridge Drive, Wednesfield, where Matthew was battered with an iron bar by the men while she grabbed her daughter round the throat to stop her intervening.

Matthew needed 40 stitches in six life-threatening head wounds.

Richard Bright, from Hilton Road, Featherstone, who has a five-year-old son and is separated from his partner, admitted wounding with intent and was jailed for four years. His mother, from Pond Lane, Fordhouses, was convicted by a jury of a similar offence and received a four-and-a-half year sentence.