Hero dad almost blinded saving his girlfriend from meat cleaver maniac who tried to BEHEAD her in unprovoked attack
A HERO dad was almost blinded as he saved his girlfriend from a maniac who tried to behead her with a meat cleaver.
Lynsey O’Neill, 37, lost two pints of blood and nearly died when her by monster Robert Warnock, 23.
Brave boyfriend Scott Mitchell, 43, stepped in to help his partner, only to have his head sliced by the brute during the unprovoked street attack in Greenock, Scotland.
Crazed Warnock swung for Scott as he tried to protect his girlfriend, embedding the cleaver deep into his forehead within millimetres of blinding him.
Scott said: “Warnock was standing on a wall with a meat cleaver in his right hand and a kitchen knife in his left.
“He started shouting at us. I tried to throw Lynsey out the way, I told her to run.
“I used to study taekwondo so I tried to grab a hold of him and sweep his legs.
“But I’ve got arthritis in both hands and they weren’t strong enough. That’s when he went for me as well.”
Despite blood pouring from a wound above his eye, Scott pulled off his T-shirt in a desperate bid to stem the flow gushing from Lynsey’s neck.
He went on: “Every time I got close to her the blood was dripping off me and landing on her.
“The gang only ran off when I shouted, ‘You’re going to kill her’.”
Panic-stricken Scott then tried to flag down passing cars to help — eventually stopping a taxi driver who called for cops and an ambulance, which arrived within minutes.
Traumatised Lynsey, who slipped into a coma as she was rushed to hospital, told how she was left dying in a pool of blood in the street after stranger Warnock sliced the weapon into her throat.
The deranged fiend swung the blade at terrified Lynsey after being goaded on by another yob who yelled: “Do that bitch in”.
The sickening blow — which came as she waited in the street for a taxi with Scott — ripped her neck open, sending blood spilling onto the pavement.
She said: "He tried to chop my head off. I felt hot stuff rushing from my neck.
“I thought it was beer that had been spilled in my bag but it was blood.
The dad suffered a fractured skull and a five-inch blade wound above his right eye which needed 40 stitches.
Doctors warned he would have lost his sight had the cleaver connected any lower.
Lynsey lost two pints of blood and was unconscious when she reached Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. She spent days in a coma fighting for life.
She had emergency surgery and needed 17 staples to close her gaping throat. She has been left permanently disfigured with an eight-inch scar that runs under her chin to her right ear.
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Surgeons told her the blade just missed vital arteries which, if severed, could have killed her in seconds.
Warnock, also of Greenock, was arrested after the midnight attack on June 28. He was convicted of assaulting Scott and trying to murder Lynsey after a trial last month.
He will be sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on February 6.
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