'I wanted to die': TV paramedic recounts moment knifeman launched frenzied attack that nearly killed her
A paramedic has relived the moment she was the victim of a frenzied knife attack at the hands of a man she was sent to help treat.
In a powerful statement outside court, Deena Evans described the moments after she was stabbed, saying she feared she was going to die.
Evans, 40, and Michael Hipgrave, 52, attended the home of Martyn Smith in Wolverhampton in July last year.
Shocking bodycam footage shows the moment Smith, 53, lunged at the pair with two large kitchen knives as they carried out a welfare check.
Both Evans and Hipgrave have starred in TV documentary Inside the Ambulance
Neighbours reported "blood curdling screams" and the pair shouting "please help, he's got a knife" and pictures show the pair being treated by terrified colleagues with Evans bleeding heavily on a stretcher.
Smith was tasered by police and arrested at the scene on Stephens Close following the attack which lasted just 12 seconds. He was sentenced to nine years in prison for each assault, to run concurrently, on Friday at Wolverhampton Crown Court. He will also serve five years on licence.
Evans suffered a punctured lung in the attack and spent three days in hospital following surgery.
She told the court in a statement how she was left haunted by the incident and relives the horrific attack "every time I close my eyes".
In a victim impact statement read in court on Friday she said: "I am a paramedic; I am also a sister, a mother and a daughter.
"It is impossible to say no part of my life has been affected because of what happened.
"I said your name, asked if you were ok, and then you jumped out and stabbed me.
"Not in the arm, or the leg, you stabbed me in my chest, and then you stabbed my colleague while he was trying to protect me.
"You were so angry, if you hadn’t have stumbled would you have carried on stabbing?
"I drifted in and out of consciousness, and thought of my family and children, and worried I would never see them again, whilst I lay in your garden dying."
Evans developed complications at hospital and required emergency surgery. She said: "I have never been so ill, at that point I wanted to die."
The paramedic said she was in pain every day as a result of the attack.
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"I will forever look down and see my scar across my chest, painful and lumpy, a constant reminder of you and what you did," she added.
"Every day I take a variety of tablets three times a day to ease the pain, often leaving me in tears.
"My children no longer feel safe, they told me they were worried ‘the bad man who hurt mommy would come back’, it keeps them awake at night too.
"However even though they were children, they had to wipe my tears, and stay strong for me, helping me to bath, or tie shoelaces.
"Imagine how helpless my family felt, and imagine how helpless I felt as a mother."
More than £4,000 was raised for the two ambulance workers through a JustGiving page after the attack.
Evans added: "That day you made a choice to pick up two large knives that you knew could possibly cause fatal damage, you made a choice to stab me with those knives, and that choice you made took away a year of my life.
"The effects of it both mentally and physically will stay with me forever, everyday I relive your face, and that knife in my chest.
"We nearly lost our lives making a choice to come and help you."
WMAS Trust Chief Executive Anthony Marsh, said after the case: "I want to commend the outstanding resilience of both Mick and Deena in their wishes to come back to work and continue to help their patients after everything they’ve been through."
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