Natalie Queiroz: Stab attack mum meets fiancé through charity

Natalie Queiroz and Simon Lyttle are due to marry in a small ceremony next year

A woman met her fiancé through a charity which helped save her life after she was stabbed 24 times in a street attack.

Natalie Queiroz, 43, was eight months pregnant when she was knifed by former partner Babur Karamat Raja, in Sutton Coldfield, in March 2016.

The mother and her unborn baby were airlifted by the Midlands Air Ambulance Charity (MAAC) and survived.

Ms Queiroz said "soulmate" Simon Lyttle proposed after fundraising together.

She suffered knife wounds to her heart, lung, liver and uterus and deep cuts to her wrists on 4 March 2016. It was heard that her breast implants "were probably what saved her life", the trial at Birmingham Crown Court was told.

Raja carried out the attack because his mother "literally drove him mad" through her disapproval of the relationship and he was forced to choose between his conservative Muslim mother's faith and the "love of his life", the court heard. He was jailed for 18 years.

Mr Lyttle popped the question to the mother of three on a beach in Tenerife

Ms Queiroz was taken away for a break in Adeje, Tenerife, when window cleaner Mr Lyttle proposed on a beach on New Year's Eve.

"He asked me to stand up and all of a sudden he was on one knee," she said.

"He timed it perfectly almost to the exact minute of when we met the year before."

Mr Lyttle and his brother Mark Lyttle, who lobbied MPs after his daughter Isabella was cared for by closure-threatened Acorns hospice in Walsall, raised funds for the MAAC, and Ms Queiroz met her future husband through the organisation.

Nearly four years after the attack, Ms Queiroz said she still lived with the effects of her injuries.

"My left hand doesn't work properly. He's put this lovely rock on my finger but I can't actually feel it so he made sure it was extra tight."

Raja pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was jailed for 18 years

She added: "It was such a violent attack and so out of the blue.

"Life went from being in a happy bubble to coming around from a coma and all of a sudden realising life had fallen apart.

"I'd gone from very happy to complete devastation within 24 hours."

Natalie Queiroz was attacked in the street in Sutton Coldfield