SWNS
A 28-year-old man has been sentenced to life imprisonment after killing the mother of his three children.
Junior Saleem Oakes stabbed 22-year-old Natasha Trevis 26 times in the chest, neck, face, head and legs after a social worker let slip that she had secretly terminated their fourth child.
Birmingham Crown Court heard Oakes subjected Natasha to a 'savage and prolonged' knife attack in the back of a taxi in Birmingham last August.
The couple had been travelling together in the car when an argument ensued.
The taxi driver, Mr Dalton, said he heard Natasha say to Oakes that they 'didn't need to talk about their relationship because they didn't have one'.
After words were exchanged between the couple the driver heard Natasha say 'he's stabbing me, he's stabbing me'.
Miss Trevis managed to escape from the car, and then attempted to get back in it, but Oakes caught her and stabbed her again. The taxi driver told the court that she 'fell to the ground or was pushed and he ran off'.
Despite the efforts of the emergency services, Natasha was declared dead at the scene.
Oakes was later arrested after a member of the public spotted him lying in a garden.
Oakes had originally been due to stand trial for Natasha's murder, but entered a guilty plea to the charge before a jury was sworn in.
Judge William Davis QC described the killing as an 'act of savagery', and one which had robbed 'three tiny children' of their mother.
He told Junior Saleem Oakes that his children will 'grow up knowing that their father killed their mother'.
Judge Davis said that Natasha was a 'good young mother, a mother to three young children aged three, two and one' and that by killing her, Oakes had 'taken her away from both her children and indeed her mother'.
"I described the attack as savage because you inflicted 26 separate wounds with a knife - many of them required severe force, and many of them were inflicted from behind. This young woman was either turning her back on you or trying to escape," he said, "She did escape from the taxi but you chased her and continued the attack even as she tried desperately to save herself."
The Daily Mail reports that Judge Davis told Natasha's family that as a father himself, he could imagine how hard it must be for them to have had their daughter 'snatched away', telling them
"You have my condolences and those of the court."