A BRAVE takeaway shop worker has told how she forced a man brandishing a meat cleaver out of the door before he slashed at his own face.

Jacqueline Baysan suffered a cut hand when Kieran Joseph Phelan asked for free food and came back with a meat cleaver and a knife after he was refused.

Phelan, 23, has admitted two charges of possessing bladed articles, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray.

Mrs Baysan was praised for her actions as Phelan was sentenced at Dorchester Crown Court.

Mrs Baysan told of the night a group of frightened teenagers ran into the Weymouth Kebab House in Westham Road and said ‘he’s coming for you with a knife.’ Mrs Baysan, 43, said: “Somebody could have been killed.

She added: “I was more worried about the young girl who was terrified.

“She was only about 15 and she said ‘he’s coming with a knife’ so I said ‘he won’t touch you’ and she said ‘he’s coming for you’.”

Mrs Baysan, who has now left the kebab shop, ushered everyone behind the counter as Phelan entered.

She said: “I went out and said ‘there’s no need for this, nobody’s been hurt’.

“He was flinging the cleaver about and I was just saying ‘get out of the shop.’ And when I pushed him out of the shop it slashed my hand.

“When he was outside he stood at the window slashing at his face and banging on the window with the meat cleaver. It was horrible. It was really horrible.”

Phelan, of Douglas Road, Weymouth, was handed four eight-month prison sentences to be served at the same time and the sentences were suspended for 12 months.

He was made the subject of a 12-month supervision order and was ordered to attend a low intensity alcohol rehabilitation programme in Weymouth.

The judge also ordered Phelan to pay Mrs Baysan £250 compensation.

Despite the ordeal Mrs Baysan, of Lodmoor Hill, wishes the former Leeds United Academy footballer well.

She said: “I wish the boy well and hope he gets himself sorted as he’s only a young man.”

She said she did not think about it as she pushed him out the door but was shocked hours later when she thought about what she had done.

She said: “I would do it for anybody and I would dread to think if my daughter was in a shop when that happened.

“I would like to think somebody would do that for her.”