Despite suffering horrendous injuries after being stabbed in the eye and stomach, Jamie Wilson is remarkably positive.

While the 22-year-old removals man lost the sight in his right eye during a knife attack earlier this year, he also realises he could have died.

Thug George Facey-Smith, 21, launched a vicious 4am assault outside Talk Nightclub, in Lucy Road, Southend, stabbing him with what is believed to be a spike-handled “Rambo” knife.

Jamie, from Southend, has bravely spoken out about the moment he felt his eyeball “burst” in a bid to warn others about the dangers of knife crime.

Facey-Smith, jailed for seven years yesterday, had been ostracised from his friendship group after they found out about his convictions for battering his girlfriend and another woman.

Jamie said: “We were all part of a friendship group at the same school and even until six months before it happened we were still part of the same group.

“But he just became not the sort of person you would want to hang around with anymore, we fell out for lots of different reasons.

“He kept saying that he was going to stab me. He’s the sort of person who shoots their mouth off so I took it with a pinch of salt.”

The threats took various forms, including text messages and the sending of a knife emoji, but the pair met outside Talk in January.

On that occasion, Facey-Smith again threatened to use a knife, but Jamie wisely walked away.

He admits that when they next bumped into each other about a month later his decision-making was impaired by alcohol.

“I was just on a night out,” he said. “He kept saying that night that he was going to stab me. When I saw him I went over expecting a fist fight, but the next thing I knew I was on the floor.

“I thought it was a really hard punch and it was just a bad black eye that had swollen up straight away.

“But my eyeball had popped. When I got to the hospital they were saying there was no eyeball there- the liquid that’s in the eye had come out.

“The only way they could describe it was that it was like a raisin.

“Because my retina had come off I’m now blind in one eye, they said there was nothing they could do.”

Echo:

George Facey-Smith

Mr Wilson said his stomach wound, inflicted while he was on the ground, was initially thought to be superficial and he was rushed to the eye unit at Southend Hospital.

The alcohol in his system meant some drugs could not be administered, but dangerously it also numbed some of the pain.

About eight hours after the attack doctors realised the blade had punctured his colon and intestine, causing serious internal bleeding.

He said: “I could have died. They said if I hadn’t have gone back to A&E I would have been a goner. If I’d have just gone back home then by the time we realised it would have been too late.”

Jamie underwent further operations on his stomach and his eye was later “reconstructed”, although it does not function and is now half the size of his left eye.

He must also live with a two-inch scar where the knife penetrated his stomach and a large scar where he was stitched up after the operation.

Jamie said although the knife was not recovered, Facey-Smith had previously shown friends a Rambo-style knife with a spiked handle, which he believes was used to inflect the wounds.

Despite his ordeal, Jamie said he is still living life to the full with girlfriend Chloe Hardy, 20.

He said: “I’m still doing everything that I was before but I will tend to go to my mates’ houses rather than have big nights out.

“I can’t do the physical side of work at the moment - which is the part I really like, but they have been great and I’m in the office at the moment.”

He added: “Most of my mates say they are amazed I’m so positive but I’m just doing the best with what I’ve got. There are people who have got it worse than me.”