MICHELLE STORER spent eight days terrified Ian McLean was coming for her.

Today, now that escaped prisoner McLean has been recaptured in Poland, the 37-year-old mother-of-two is angry.

She is demanding to know why her former lover McLean – serving a life sentence for stabbing and punching her as she lay sleeping in her bed seven years ago – was being kept in an unlocked mental health unit at Littlemore Hospital and was able to escape.

McLean, 44, was last seen by staff at the Oxford Health-run facility at about 10pm on Sunday, July 7. He was arrested eight days later in the Polish city of Kolobrzeg, and police believe he skipped to mainland Europe aboard Eurostar.

Detectives are now trying to extradite him back to Britain.

Last night Miss Storer was furious McLean had been able to escape and said of her eight-day ordeal: “Terrifying is not the word.

“I have lived in total fear for the past eight days. I have not been able to go out, my daughter Maegan has not been able to play with her friends.

“The police told me they thought he was in Europe but (six) days ago they were still searching my back garden. “He had got some money and who is to say he would not come back and finish his job off?”

She added: “At the end of the day they have admitted he was a dangerous person but he was being kept in an unlocked unit. I would say they (Oxford Health) need their heads testing. There’s no way he should have been allowed there without a complete assessment.

“The police did their job. It’s Littlemore I have the problem with. I want answers”

But Miss Storer said there were many questions about how prison and mental health authorities have dealt with McLean.

McLean has spent some of his sentence in Bullingdon prison, near Bicester, and at some point was transferred by the Ministry of Justice to Littlemore Hospital for treatment.

Both organisations have refused to give many details of his history, but a spokesman for the hospital has said McLean “followed a pathway, to a point where he was no longer residing in a secure unit”.

Miss Storer said she was told he had been sent to a mental health unit in Milton Keynes but was being allowed out on day release to Oxford library. And she questioned why he was in an unlocked unit when he had previously escaped from an open prison.

She said: “He must have been in Littlemore and not Milton Keynes. That’s why he was at Oxford library. And that is only 25 minutes from me.”

“He escaped in 2003 or 2004 before he did what he did to me. I had an ectopic pregnancy and they wouldn’t give him compassionate leave to see me so he did a runner from Spring Hill open prison, I think and came to see me.

“I had to take him back to Bullingdon. He’s very good at escaping.”

Miss Storer was told at 9am on Tuesday he had been recaptured and she said: “I just burst into tears. I thought he would be on the run for months. I won’t feel safe until I know he is in a secure unit.”

She is meeting Banbury MP Sir Tony Baldry next month because she said no other victim should face the same ordeal.

  • IT was only the bravery of her 11-year-old daughter Leanne that saved Michelle Storer when Ian McLean broke into her home and started stabbing her.

He had threatened her and was being kept at the Elms mental health clinic in Banbury in 2004.

“He got out and I was not told,” she recalled. “About quarter-to-five one morning he broke into my house somehow while I was asleep.

“Leanne was next to me – she was 11 at the time – and he started punching me in the face and then stabbed me 10 times.

“I had a panic alarm for the police on my wrist and Leanne managed to reach past Ian and press it.
“If it was not for her I would probably be dead now.”

McLean, previously jailed for attacking a man with a razor, was due to stand trial for attempted murder but admitted wounding with intent. He was given a life sentence in December 2004 and told it would be four years before he could apply for parole.

Miss Storer, who lives in Bretch Hill, Banbury, said: “I ended it because he had cheated on me for years and he was not right. When he got out of prison (after the razor attack) he tried to make a go of it but it was too little, too late.”

She said he had written to her at every address she had stayed at, and 18 months ago he sent a relative a picture of her mother and two daughters and a wedding ring, which she took as a threat to her family.