WATCH: Knife attack has left me living in terror

Purshotam Lal was hospitalised for 28 days and now struggles to walk and cannot climb stairs after he was brutally attacked by David Dean at News and Booze on Bilston Road, Bilston.

The 51-year-old suffered 18 stab wounds, some which were life-threatening, and a broken leg in the attack on December 21 last year. He is now too nervous to go out on his own.

"I was standing in the shop and somebody came in with a knife," he recalls about the night. "He started stabbing at me, and it went on for about five or six minutes."

Mr Lal, from Hargreaves Street, Stowheath, managed to get to his phone, which was lying next to him on the floor, and call his son Sunny, aged 27, who then phoned the police and paramedics from home.

"It was about 9.15pm at the shop and he was getting ready to close up at 10pm," says Sunny, picking up the story.

"The guy went in, he had a mask on and his hood over his head.

"He even said hello. He said 'are you alright gaffer?' which is what people call my dad. Then he just got the knife and started stabbing straight away.

"My dad tried to defend himself by grabbing a stick that was under the counter but the guy just carried on.

"There were 40 blows and 18 stab wounds, 11 on the arms, two on the back, two on the head, two in the stomach and one on the finger.

"He broke his leg as well when he fell to the ground.

"I got a phone call so we rushed to the hospital, we didn't know how severe the injuries were so we thought we might lose him. When we got there, the doctors said he was doing OK, so that reassured us."

Dean was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic after a lifetime of drug abuse and locked up indefinitely in a secure hospital.

He was deemed unfit to stand trial for attempted murder due to the state of his mental health.

He had previously received a four-and-a-half year jail sentence in 1992 for slashing the face of a shop assistant in Wolverhampton, who needed 43 stitches.

He is under treatment at a clinic near Birmingham and can only be freed in future on the orders of doctors and the Home Secretary. "My dad is just happy he's locked up," says Sunny. "And that the streets are safer now he's not around. He misses his job but is too scared to go back at the moment.

"It was just a massive shock to all of us, everyone knows everyone here and you don't expect a random attack like this.

"He knows everyone in the area and gets on really well with his customers, he's had lots of people being nice to him and wishing him well since it happened.

"He thought he was going to die, he was just shocked because he's lived here for about 30 years, and worked in the shop for 10, and nothing like this has ever happened before." Mr Lal, meanwhile, is slowly on the mend. He's finished physiotherapy and is trying to build himself up mentally and physically to go back to work.

While recovering, charity NewstrAid, which provides welfare for newspaper sellers who have suffered hardship, funded a new bed and have given financial support for the family.

Mr Lal wished to thank the charity for its help as he tries to get back to living a normal life. He said: "I feel a bit better since it happened but I still can't walk properly.

"The money has been a big help, I can't go upstairs so to have the bed downstairs makes it much easier.

"But I sometimes can't sleep, I have flashbacks at night. I can feel someone over my shoulder and then I wake up and can't get back to sleep."

Dean was locked up back in August.

A jury took just 47 minutes to unanimously decide he was the attacker.

Dean from Holloway Street, Monmore Green appeared at Wolverhampton Crown Court, where Judge John Wait ordered him to be detained indefinitely in secure accommodation under a Hospital Order after two psychiatrists reported that the defendant was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia triggered by an abuse of heroin, cocaine and other drugs, from the age of 10. He is now under treatment at the Reaside Clinic near Birmingham