This is the last selfie taken by a primary school teacher before he was stabbed twice by two men while on a night out.
Ryan Wayne, 26, had been on his way home from a night out in Birmingham city centre with his friend Brody when they were approached by two men who demanded their phones and money.
When Ryan refused, they stabbed him twice.
The 26-year-old was left bleeding out in the street and suffered lacerating to his liver and a punctured lung following the attack on February 17.
Fortunately, the quick action of his friend saved his life but he still had to undergo emergency surgery at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and ended up in a coma for a week.
Almost three months on from the attack, Ryan is now determined raise awareness about the dangers of carrying a knife.
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He told Birmingham Live : "I’d been on a night out with my friends in the city centre and I was walking home with a friend.
“These two guys approached us and demanded we hand over our things. I’m quite stubborn and I just said ‘No you’re not having it’.
“That’s when he attacked me. I didn’t insult him in any way, I didn’t tell him to f***off. He just stabbed me.”
“Adrenaline and shock takes over at that point, and I tried to run home and get some help. I didn’t know what had happened.
“But then I looked down and I saw it all. And I thought ‘Oh my God, I’ve been stabbed’.
“My friend Brody helped me. If it wasn’t for him I think I definitely wouldn’t be here today. I’m so thankful for what he did that night.
“He stayed with me, he kept me awake while the paramedics came.”
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Ryan says emergency services arrived within five minutes and he was rushed to the trauma centre at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
“I was absolutely terrified,” he said. “I thought I was going to die. I thought ‘This is it’. From the moment the paramedics arrived I don’t remember anything, and I was asleep for a week.
“It’s so strange to wake up and a week has passed. I didn’t know where I was.”
While Ryan was in a coma, surgeons had performed two life-saving operations, repairing his liver and lung.
After a week in intensive care, Ryan was discharged on March 1.
Ryan, who teaches at St Bernadette’s Catholic Primary School in Yardley, says the hardest part "wasn’t the wounds or the pain. It was seeing my mum, dad and sisters so upset.
“It was gut-wrenching – but I just felt so amazed that my life had been saved.
“The care I received was absolutely incredible. The main thing is that I’m still here.”
While he was in hospital, his friend Craig Butler, who was also out with Ryan on the night of the attack, raised £1,162 for to help fund a mobile CT scanner for Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
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Though Ryan has physically almost fully recovered, he says it's the emotional impact that is affecting him the most.
“I’m still reluctant to go out at night in the dark,” he admits. “It instills more anxiety and fear in you.
“But to combat that I’ve thrown myself into knife crime awareness.”
Just weeks after being discharged from hospital, Ryan has written and produced an educational knife crime workshop, which he plans to present to the pupils at his primary school.
Following that, he hopes to present his workshop at other schools across the city, sharing his story with children before they might consider carrying a knife.
Ryan also wrote a letter to Home Secretary Sajid Javid about his experience, outlining what he thinks needs to be done to tackle the knife epidemic, and received a personal reply, which said he would be putting more money into workshops in primary and secondary schools."
“That’s when I had the idea to do my own.”
Ryan admits that the workshops have helped him turn his attack into into something positive,
He also says people need to remember that knife crime has a ripple effect.
“It’s not just one person,” he says. “This violence causes pain to me, but also my family, to my friends, to the pupils I teach, to their parents. The ripple goes on and on. And it also affects the assailants.
“I worry that people have become desensitised to stabbings because they are happening all the time. That’s why I want to share my story.
“I almost got killed for what? A mobile phone and some change?
“I’ll never know whether I still would have been stabbed if I’d handed over the phone.
“But people shouldn’t feel like they need to carry knives. It needs to stop. We need to understand the reasons behind it.
“The next person might not be so lucky.”
Ryan has also organised an 18-mile charity awareness walk on June 30 from Lichfield city centre to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
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