Stabbing victim recounts harrowing moment boyfriend tried to kill her before driving rampage that killed nurse

It was meant to be a romantic holiday. A trip that would mark the start of a new life together.

Sarah Wallace and Keith Mitton had flown to Tasmania so that he could ask her parents for permission to take her hand in marriage.

Next stop for the Perth couple was America, where they had planned to tie the knot.

But in a horrifying turn of events — that she is still trying to process — those dreams were shattered.

On July 24, as they got ready to go out for dinner to celebrate her dad’s birthday, nothing could have prepared Ms Wallace for what was to come.

“I was in the bath and my back was to the door, I had my eyes closed. I was just lying down. I heard the door open and about four steps, and then there was nothing. I waited to see if he would say anything, and then I opened my eyes,” the mother of four said.

“He was standing over me with a knife. I thought he was joking at first. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t joking at all.”

Mitton launched into a frenzied attack. She was left with at least 20 stab wounds, all while her eight-year-old and 12-year-old daughters were in another room just metres away.

He just started stabbing, just frantically stabbing. He wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing.

So ferocious was the attack that the knife became so bent it “wasn’t having an impact anymore”.

Ms Wallace says the filleting knife Mitton picked up may have inadvertently saved her life — because it’s flexibility meant it couldn’t sustain the attack.

Mitton threw the weapon into the sink in a rage and she was left wondering if he would return with another.

“I somehow managed the strength to pull myself out of the bath, and my phone was there somewhere. But the first thing I did was lock the bathroom door because he might realise that I’m not dead and come back,” she said.

Mitton, 43, had fled in their rented blue Skoda, driving erratically until he slammed into a Nissan Navara on Launceston’s West Tamar Highway.

The head-on crash killed nurse and mum Elaine Gee as well as Mitton when both cars exploded into flames.

It wasn’t until five days later Ms Wallace, 42, had been told what had happened.

Now, each time she catches her reflection or attempts to take a shower, she is reminded of the horror.

“I don’t understand it. Sometimes I’m really angry, I look in the mirror at my body and my chest and stuff, and it’s horrible. I have to live with this every single day,” she said.

And while she doesn’t know why he did what he did, the benefit of hindsight has allowed her to assess his behaviour that day.

“He had been different all day. I don’t really know why, but he just was different. I still don’t know why he did what he did, and we’re never going to know,” she said.

“He did such a horrible thing to me. I have no doubt he was trying to kill me and I’ll never know why.”

The pair started dating in January and Ms Wallace said their relationship was mostly a happy and loving one.

She sold her home in Lakelands to move into his Landsdale property with her two daughters.

Mitton, had already proposed, but the pair wanted to respect tradition, by asking her parents who live in Tasmania for their blessing.

The couple had already booked for their September holiday to America, which would be the first overseas holiday that either had ever been on.

They had big plans for when they returned to Perth as a married couple, too.

“With some proceeds from my house, we were about to start a business,” Ms Wallace said.

“We had been going around and looking at bobcats and looking at six-by-four tippers. We talked about it and Keith said, ‘I don’t want to go back to work until after we get back from America’. But we were really keen on this business idea and fulfilling his dream. We even had a logo.”

It was to be the light at the end of a dark tunnel for Mitton, whose mental health declined rapidly after he had lost work as a welder fabricator after hurting his back at home.

“For him to get this sort of job, he was so proud of himself, and then when he lost it, he lost part of his identity. It really emasculated him that he couldn’t provide,” Ms Wallace said.

Mitton even attempted to take his life in the months afterwards.

“When he tried to kill himself, his housemates took him to the hospital, and they waited 10 hours and he didn’t get seen. And then they went back the next day and waited six hours and didn’t get seen.”

Irrespective of his battles, Ms Wallace, who was discharged from hospital in Tasmania on August 7, said she was stumped at how the man she considered the love of her life could not only try to kill her but an innocent woman, too.

The family of Ms Gee, the mum-of-two on her way home from a nursing shift at Launceston General Hospital when she was hit and killed by Mitton’s car, was also in her thoughts.

“I feel their loss and I want to give my condolences,” she said.

Ms Wallace now faces the difficult task of finding somewhere new for her and her daughters to settle in Perth after the executor of Mitton’s will asked her to leave the house.

A glimmer of hope came in a reunion on Sunday with her daughters, who had been staying with her sister while she recovered.

A GoFundMe was established to help them get back on their feet and has raised $30,000.