Woman speaks out about how it feels to have her limbs severed

As the boyfriend of Sugababes star Amelle Berrabah recovers from a horrific machete attack, one woman has spoken out about how it feels to have her limbs severed.

Gaytri Collet nearly lost her arms when her ex-husband tried to kill her with a machete at their son's birthday party. She literally had to have her limbs sewn back on.

Freddie Fuller, 25, was found lying in a pool of blood following a machete attack on Christmas eve. The boyfriend of singer Amelle was left with an arm and leg hanging off, witnesses claim.

Gaytri, 44, knows only too well how it feels to be savaged by a machete. The mum of five and her family were getting ready for her son Dillan's 15th birthday when her ex Proboodat Joucoo turned up uninvited.

The 50-year-old pulled out a machete and attacked Gaytri in front of her horrified kids. She said: "I said to my daughter Lisa 'oh God Lees, what's he going to do to me'?

"I looked on in terror as he came at me and instinctively I lifted up my hand to shield myself.

"I could feel the machete going through my bone as he chopped my arm and it just flapped all the way back - it was just the skin holding it.

"Then he chopped me in the leg and as the children screamed in horror I fell to the floor and blacked out."

The next thing Gaytri knew she was in hospital. She had been in a coma for two weeks. She said: "The minute I opened my eyes I was shouting 'he's going to come and get me'."

Gaytri had met Joucoo in her native Trinidad and the pair married in 1994. They had four children together as well as Gaytri's daughter from a previous marriage.

Gaytri said their first few years of marriage was fine but soon Joucoo was drinking heavily. Things took a turn for the worst when they moved to New York, where she still lives.

She said: "He would get drunk and come home really crazy. "He'd throw things around and break them, telling me 'you are so ugly, no one is ever going to want you' and saying that if I went back to Trinidad with the kids he would kill me.

"I was too scared to tell the family in case he carried out his threats."

Finally, after one attack, Gaytri fled to the police station and Joucoo was given a restraining order. But it didn't keep him away.

Gaytri said: "He told me 'the day I ever leave I am going to make sure that I kill you. You're not going to be left for somebody else'.

"When he turned up at that birthday party, that's what he wanted to do."

Doctors literally had to piece Gaytri back together following the attack, in May 2005. Both her arms had been nearly severed and one was so bad, surgeons nearly amputated it.

Joucoo went on the run and was not found for a year. Cops finally caught up with him, in jail accused of sexually assaulting another woman.

Joucoo pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to 15 years in jail earlier this year. Gaytri said: "My right arm is frozen and I have limited finger movement in my left. If something burns me I don't feel it. I can't write because I can't close the palm of my hand.

"I have no feeling in one leg from my thigh to my knee.

"I have to have a home attendant to take care of the house and do things like hook my bra, brush my hair and help me cook.

"But I am grateful I have my kids and that I'm alive, even if I almost had to die for us finally to be left alone."