A woman has recalled in harrowing detail how her partner stabbed her 24 times times with a 12-inch knife while she was eight months pregnant with their first child.
Appearing on ITV's Lorraine, 42-year-old Natalie Queiroz said she and her daughter are lucky to be alive following the frenzied attack in 2016 at the hands of her other half, Babur 'Bobby' Karamat Raja, 41.
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The couple had been friends for nearly 24 years after meeting at grammar school and reconnected on social media in 2015 following her divorce.
Describing their relationship as "a whirlwind romance", Natalie, who was already a mother-of-two, said that Bobby was "pushing" for them to start a family weeks after moving in together, although his mother, a strict Muslim, didn't approve.
Natalie, who has chronicled the chilling ordeal in her book Still Standing, told Lorraine Kelly how the day of the attack had started off like any other and had arranged to meet Bobby in Sutton Coldfield town centre.
She began: "I was on the phone to him to tell him I had left the house. He told me he was stuck in traffic. His final words to me were, 'I love you' and I said, 'I love you too'.
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However, the author, who was then eight-months-pregnant, soon realised she was being "followed" and at first thought it was a stranger trying to mug her.
"He was fully in disguise and he just jumped on me from behind before I knew it," she said."I thought I was being mugged and before I knew it, he had drawn a knife and the stabbing began.
"I was screaming, 'Why me?', because I thought it was some stranger who had taken exception as I was eight months pregnant.
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"Perhaps it was someone who had a vendetta against pregnant women. And the last person I ever thought it would be, would be my partner."
Little did Natalie know at the time, but Bobby had stabbed her 24 times in the chest, stomach, arms and had attempted to slash her throat.
The daytime assault was so brutal Natalie was left with a severed artery and holding her intestines in her hands on the pavement.
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She was lucky to survive as was her baby daughter, after Bobby's knife narrowly missed her by two millimetres.
Natalie said: "He stabbed me in the stomach as well as cutting various major organs so my blood loss was huge that's why we thought the knife had hit her. It actually missed her by two millimetres."
She was taken straight into theatre from the air ambulance where for the next five hours surgeons battled to both save her and safely deliver her daughter.
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24 hours after being put into a medical coma, Natalie woke to the news that she had a daughter before three policeman informed her about who was behind the attack.
Two months after the near-fatal attack, Natalie learned at the court case that Bobby's conservative mother's gave him an ultimatum to choose between her and his partner, which led to mental illness
Bobby pleaded guilty to the attack was sentenced to 18 years by Birmingham's Crown Court for attempted murder of Natalie, their child and endangering passersby during the ordeal.
Three years on, Natalie revealed that she has met someone new and is looking forward to moving on with her life.
Topics: Life News, Real Life, ITV