A YOUNG woman has told how her sister saved her life when her ex-friend plunged a knife into her jugular – an injury which nearly killed her twice.

Blood poured from Makela Patterson’s body and she was almost dead when she collapsed on the doorstep of her sister Zavena Burrowes’ home.

Then, hours later the 22-year-old restaurant worker, nearly lost her life while surgeons operated on her.

Now Makela is desperately trying to understand why her ex-friend Denise Beckford attacked her.

Beckford, aged 32, of Lye, was jailed for 12 years after she was found guilty of wounding with intent at Birmingham Crown Court. The court heard she knifed Makela following a row at her uncle’s Caribbean Mish Mash restaurant on Dudley Road in Winson Green.

Makela had left her job at the eatery following a dispute over being told to wear a uniform and wages. It was then that Beckford knifed Makela four times during a scuffle in Archibald Road, Lozells, last November. The blade penetrating her chest and, in a second strike, it pierced her neck.

“I didn’t see the actual knife, she must have had it between her fingers, but I felt it,” said Makela.

“Blood just started squirting from my neck and she ran off.

“I ran across the road to my sister’s house and banged on the door. I stood there holding my neck. All I could think about was my family and that I had to stay alive for them.

“The one thing that kept me breathing was to have people in life who you love so much. That is my family. My mum was pregnant. I wanted to know whether I would get a little baby brother or sister.

“My family would have been left with the pieces would have been in pieces if I died.”

Zavena, aged 29, said: “I couldn’t believe it, all I saw was blood squirting out of her neck. She collapsed in my arms and I laid her on the floor and it looked like a pool of blood was oozing out beneath her. I put pressure on the wound and she looked at me and said ‘I’m dying’.