An autistic teen was brutally stabbed in his chest and required life-saving surgery after finally plucking up the courage to leave his house.

Billy Baxter, 16, was attacked as he ventured out in his hometown of Blackburn for just the second time in more than two years due to his social anxiety.

He was knifed in the heart and lungs and was left with a 12-inch scar running down the length of his chest.

His mother, Jessie Brian, 35, said her son was left traumatised by the incident and the family are now planning to move out of the area where they have lived all their lives.

Billy’s 17-year-old attacker – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was sentenced to just 28 months in custody for the attack last week.

He was originally charged with attempted murder but this was downgraded to wounding with intent by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Jessie described the sentence as a ‘slap on the wrist’ while Billy had been forced to turn his back on his life and ambitions.

‘Billy wanted to be a plumber and now he’s too scared to go out of the house just when he got his confidence back,’ she said.

‘It’s heart-breaking what he’s done to my son, and in court, he held his head up high like nothing had happened.

‘I’ve been around this area for 35 years – it’s the only area that I’ve known – and now we have to leave because the attacker knows my address and so does his family.’

Billy has ADHD and autism and had previously lived at his girlfriend’s house, where he stayed inside for two years.

But they broke up shortly before the attack on September 17 last year and Billy moved back home with Jessie.

He was ambushed after leaving the house at around 6.45pm to meet up with a new love interest.

Jessie said: ‘I said to Billy, “Just get out there! You need to start socialising with people and making new friends. Forget about everything that’s happened”.

‘So he’d met this young girl, and managed to get to town and to see her, but then he heard his name being shouted across the road.

‘He put his hood down and didn’t want any trouble, but next thing he knew the lad was in front of his face, and he got stabbed straight in the chest.’

Jessie found out about the stabbing after Billy contacted her over messaging platform Snapchat in the minutes after it took place.

She said: ‘I got a phone call from one of his friends on Snapchat, and it was actually Billy on the phone saying that he had been stabbed.

‘I thought it was someone having a joke because it didn’t sound like Billy.

‘It was only when he said: “It is me, mum, I’ve been stabbed and I’m on my way to the hospital,” that’s when I found out.’

Billy was stabbed in between his heart and liver and was suffering from internal bleeding.

A tube that connects his heart to the blood supply had been cut by the knife and it also pierced his heart.

He required a dangerous life-saving operation within 24 hours which Jessie described as a ‘nightmare.’

As well as the physical scars, she said her son has been left with mental trauma.

‘My 16-year-old who wanted to go to college and be a plumber hasn’t got a life now because he won’t go out,’ she said.

‘He feels very conscious about the scars. He talks about it every single day. It’s not just one little scar. It’s one big massive scar and two scars underneath it.’

Jessie also feels the sentence that her son’s attacker received won’t deter other kids from carrying knives in the future.

She said: ’28 months is a slap on the hand. This boy who did all this will probably get out and get a job or whatever, and my son is left not knowing what to do next.’

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