THE first strike with the knife happened so quickly that initially the man who had intervened in an ugly street brawl in Newcastle West thought he had just been punched.
Then the attacker, 18-year-old Coora-Jye Wieczorek, swiftly stabbed him again in the same place, leaving the blade lodged in his side, turned and ran away.
"I remember feeling a sharp pain around my ribs and when I touched my side," the man wrote in a victim impact statement read in Newcastle District Court on Thursday. "I felt the knife sticking out. "Instantly I felt scared and thought the worst. I thought I was going to die and I started to panic."
Wieczorek has pleaded guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and common assault over the brawl that spilled from Hunter Street into Bellevue Street about 3.10am on May 22 last year.
He faced a sentence hearing on Thursday, and listened as the victim's statement about the impact of the stabbing was read in court by VOCAL Chief Executive Officer Kerrie Thompson.
"I was told several times by the doctors that I was extremely lucky that the knife pierced my lung without puncturing it," the victim said in the statement.
The victim said he had been forced to take weeks off work to physically recover, felt angry at himself for trying to intervene, was reluctant to go out in Newcastle and had been embarrassed at being linked to such a violent crime.
Before the stabbing, Wieczorek had been the instigator of an ugly street brawl and traded punches with another shirtless young man as bystanders urged them on.
But then, as the crowd started to turn against his mate, Kye Martin, 20, approached Wieczorek and subtly handed him something.
Martin, who has pleaded guilty to his role in the stabbing, then promptly turned and swiftly walked towards Hunter Street.
As Martin was walking away, Wieczorek swung twice more at the 29-year-old victim, this time stabbing him in the chest.
The second blow left the blade lodged in the 29-year-old's side, breaking his rib, and Wieczorek fled down Bellevue Street as a mob gave chase.
The group caught Wieczorek in Hunter Street and a number of people punched, stomped and kicked him in the head when he was on the ground, Wieczorek said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the victim was discovering something was wrong.
"I've just been stabbed," the victim said, pulling the knife out of his side and dropping it on the ground.
The entire brawl and stabbing was captured not only on a number of CCTV cameras attached to businesses in Bellevue Street but by bystanders on unit balconies who had been woken at 3am by a crowd of aggressive and intoxicated young men.
Wieczorek gave evidence on Thursday, saying hearing the victim impact statement for the first time had been "confronting".
"I can't take back anything that I did on the night, but I am sincerely sorry for the damage I caused," Wieczorek said via audio visual link from jail.
He said he had undertaken a number of programs in jail and now had a greater insight into his emotional responses and why he started a number of fights that night and ultimately stabbed the victim.
He will be sentenced in June.
And the central issue for Judge Peter McGrath, SC, to determine when he sentences Wieczorek is whether there was any planning behind the stabbing and whether Wieczorek knew Martin had the weapon before it was handed to him in the fight.
Wieczorek will be sentenced on May 8.
