A woman who nearly died at the hands of knife-wielding teenager Raheem Nawaz has said he should be locked up for life.

Sarah Wade’s family was told that her life was “touch and go” after her 19-year-old attacker plunged a six-inch blade into her stomach four times while she waited for a taxi home with friends outside The Livery Rooms’ Wetherspoons pub, in North Street, Keighley, on August 20 this year.

That night the 44-year-old mother was one of seven people who Nawaz, of Heaton, Bradford, pleaded guilty to attempting to murder, at Bradford Crown Court, on Monday.

He awaits sentencing in February but may be detained in a high security hospital.

Ms Wade, a community home carer from Riddlesden, said that the thought of her attacker being out on the streets again in just a few years sickened her.

She said: “A guilty plea is better than having to give evidence at a trial but police have told me that his sentence is unlikely even to run into double figures, which I just cannot understand — he stuck a knife into seven people.

“It is best if he is detained indefinitely. I don’t know if I could still live around here if I knew he was going to be out again soon.

“It happened to me first, I didn’t see the knife going in but my friends saw it all and it is affecting them psychologically more and more. They are tearful and terrified to go out without being with a big group of people. I definitely can’t go anywhere near Wetherspoons.

“It has completely affected my life. I still can’t do simple things like vacuum or go back to work but by far the biggest consequence has been that my 16-year-old son, Stephen, who is severely autistic, now has to stay in residential care instead of living with me and I can only see him once a week.

“He is my life and it is devastating, but I have him home for Christmas at least.”

Civil servant Majid Hussain, 27, tackled Nawaz and brought him to the ground in Albert Street around the corner from the pub, but received slash wounds to his neck and a stab to his shoulder in the process.

Mr Hussain, who was in court on Monday, said he welcomed the guilty plea.

He said: “The punishment is for the courts to decide. I just hope that if he does have mental health problems that they address those properly and not just send him to a standard prison if he needs treatment.”

His brother-in-law, Mohammed Nazam, was Nawaz’s first victim, attacked in Victoria Road on his way to the mosque. He was in hospital for six weeks with a stab wound to the chest and has not yet been able to go back to work.