'If she'd lived, would he still be free?' Mum's fury as boy who stabbed daughter TEN TIMES for rejecting him walks FREE

From the Newshound archive · first published 9 October 2026.

A 14-year-old boy who followed a 13-year-old girl into a Cirencester shop after she rejected him, then cornered her with a 6-inch kitchen knife and stabbed her ten times, escaped jail at Bristol Crown Court — walking away with a 12-month referral order and a three-year restraining order. Detectives compared the case to Netflix drama 'Adolescence'. The girl's mother says only the intervention of a brave shopkeeper stopped her daughter being killed.

The boy had stalked the girl using fake social media accounts after she turned him down, then waited outside the shop armed with a blade concealed in his jeans.

The shopkeeper who tried to pull the attacker away was himself stabbed in the back during the assault, which was captured in full on CCTV.

The victim now suffers nightmares, flinches when people raise their hands near her and is too frightened to go out alone; her mother says: 'I want some justice for my child — I want some protection.'