A man who witnessed one of several stabbings in the space of two hours in Birmingham has said he saw the attacker stab a woman “several times” in the neck – and a male victim “covered in blood”.
A murder investigation has been launched after one man died and seven other people were injured, two seriously, following the “random” series of attacks in the city centre overnight.
Police are hunting for an unknown male suspect.
Police officers and a forensic worker at the scene
Armed police patrol after the incidents
Bar owner Savvas Sfrantziz told Sky News he saw the man, who he described as “a black guy between 20 and 25, wearing a black hoodie with two white stripes on the front, black trousers and a black cap”.
Mr Sfrantziz said: “I saw him stabbing the girl several times in the neck. I was only about 20 yards away.
“She started screaming: ‘He’s stabbing me.’ But everybody thought he was robbing her because she had a necklace.
“But I saw it and I started screaming.”
The suspect, he said, “wasn’t panicking” after stabbing the woman and was “just walking” away.
Mr Sfrantziz, who owns the Mykonos bar on Hurst Street, where the last of four attacks identified by police took place, said he couldn’t go near because “I saw the knife”.
The suspect was chased away by two other men, he added.
Police were called, he said, but most people “thought it was just a robbery”.
“Then I screamed that a girl was stabbed,” he added.
The attacks took place across several streets between 12.30am and 2.30am on Sunday, according to West Midlands Police, and Mr Sfrantziz said there were still plenty of people in the area.
He said: “It was a busy time and people started panicking when they saw the girl on the floor – and there was another guy further up in the middle of the road.
“You could see blood all over the English guy. The girl was unconscious – but the guy was screaming ‘he stabbed me’ and swearing at his attacker. It happened within seconds.”
Asked if it looked like the woman knew the man who attacker her, he replied: “No, definitely not.”
Mr Sfrantziz said “it looked very random, the way he did it, because it happened within seconds”.
“He didn’t argue with her much,” he added.
As he made stabbing gestures to his throat, Mr Sfrantziz said: “He just went up to her and just stabbed her. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Another witness, Barbora Jurcikova, said she was chatting to friends on her phone when she heard screams for help.
She went out into Irving Street and saw one of the victims.
He had “no colour to his face” and “looked like he was dying”, she said.
Ms Jurcikova said the victim had been pulled out of a bush, and paramedics were “pressing his chest for a long time”.
She did not see the attacker.
It was later confirmed that the man had died.
That assault was reported to the authorities at 1.52am.
Later, two forensic tents were put up nearby, close to the gates of a primary school.
