A man from Hackney who attacked a stranger with a knife and left him fighting for his life after an argument in the street has been jailed for three years.

A man from Hackney who attacked a stranger with a knife and left him fighting for his life after an argument in the street has been jailed for three years.

Paul Chambers, 27, of Poole Road, Hackney, was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm to his victim, of Walthamstow, at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Thursday.

The man spent more than a week in a medically-induced coma recovering from his injuries.

Following the stabbing in Gale Street, Dagenham, he stumbled into the office of nearby Essex Minicabs.

“I’m not sure how I got there,” he told the Gazette’s sister paper the Barking and Dagenham Post, “but I asked for the next available cab and was told it would be 20 minutes.”

Drifting in and out of consciousness, he was awoken by a staff member who asked if he was OK.

“I said: ‘I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but I think I’m dying’,” he said.

Zaman Raza drove him to Queen’s Hospital, Romford, where he told the driver: “I can’t move.” The next thing he remembers is waking up 10 days later.

“It was a terrifying experience,” he said. “I spent a lot of the time [after the stabbing] drugged up so I don’t remember a lot, but I do remember it was awful and painful. Even with quite a lot of drugs, you can still feel the pain trying to force its way through.”

Unemployed Chambers was originally tried for attempted murder in November 2013 but the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

“It was heartbreaking,” said his victim, an electrician. “If you can’t get justice, it’s like you don’t mean anything – you’re not worth anything.”

A London-wide bid to trace the driver ended with officers discovering the stabbing had followed an argument between the two men, who didn’t know each other but had a mutual friend.

“It was just macho attitude that escalated into an argument, which turned into a fight, and unfortunately he had a knife,” the victim added.

“If he’d brandished it beforehand, I’d have done a runner, but he didn’t. He was punching me with the knife in his hand but I didn’t know it.”

This story was amended in March 2017 at the victim’s request to remove his name.