CCTV PIX FOR STABBING _ TO COME

Samuel Reid-Wentworth (22) was told he would have to be watched day and night because he posed such a danger to the general public.

He has begun his time in the Berkshire mental hospital after he inflicted horrific injuries on a innocent woman while she was out shopping.

Judge Anthony Scott-Gall told him when he passed sentence at Hove Crown Court last Thursday after Reid-Wentworth had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing: "The facts of this case are deeply disturbing because this was a horrific, frenzied and wholly irrational attack on a young woman doing nothing more than her shopping in Somerfield.

"The injuries she suffered were, without a shadow of a doubt, life-threatening. Doctors have said it is a miracle she survived.

"People in the store at the time '“ including men, women and children '“ must have been absolutely terrified and the memory of that day will most likely stay with them for ever."

Reid-Wentworth spent weeks plotting the attack so he could drink the blood of a pretty girl.

Lucy Yates (20) was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was looking around the Somerfield store in Littlehampton town centre on September 16 last year.

She was in the sweet aisle of the supermarket when Reid-Wentworth suddenly began stabbing her 21 times while he screamed: 'I'm a psycho'.

He told police he was proud of what he had done and would have stabbed her more to make sure she died.

He had been released from residential care just a few weeks before the attack after he seemed to have responded well to treatment.

But he secretly stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication and hid his symptoms from health professionals.

He had already received two cautions for assaulting women by then and planned every detail of his attack.

He made daily bus journeys around West Sussex, bought a folding knife, and hid a samurai sword in bushes opposite Tesco in Bognor near his home.

He went missing during the weekend of September 13-14. His mother reported this and he was seen looking dishevelled in Chichester on September 14.

Two days later, he got on the 700 Stagecoach service at Portsmouth Harbour.

He went to get off at Bognor but changed his mind and stayed on the bus until it stopped outside the Somerfield store in Littlehampton.

CCTV shows Lucy walking past the bus into the shop.

A few seconds later, Reid-Wentworth is seen getting off and appears to follow her into the store.

He attacked her a few minutes after this.

He was distracted from his stabbing by shoppers and store staff and threw his knife down when he was told to. He was detained until the police arrived.

The samurai sword was recovered by police officers that evening.

They found 50 deep stab marks on the bathroom door of his bedsit, made while he practised for the attack.

A disturbing letter written beforehand by Reid-Wentworth was opened by a clinical psychologist two days later.

It described how he wished to attack a young woman in a Bognor supermarket.

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