She said she stopped a passing police car before officers chased a man down the street. It is then believed he stabbed himself and collapsed.

Mrs Taylor said: “I had just come out of the chemist and he was walking towards me when he went for her.

Hero

“I went into the chemist and got lots of pads and held them to her until ambulances and paramedics arrived and that was about five minutes.

“I don’t want any attention. I don’t want to be a hero, I’m just a normal person.

“We were just comforting her really. I was just being a good Samaritan who happened to be there.”

Mrs Taylor then went to pick up her two-year-old granddaughter from a pre-school, where she was able to wash Mrs Parton’s blood from her hands and clothes.

Witnesses expressed shock at what happened yesterday afternoon.

Anne Tootill, who works at Church Stretton Spar shop and Post Office, said she saw the man thought to be involved in the incident earlier in the day.

She added: “I saw him at about 1.40pm when he came into the shop to buy something and said ‘hello Anne, how are you?’. He had a grey suit on and a blue tie.

“I hadn’t seen him for a long while. He just seemed his normal self.

“He wasn’t agitated, he seemed fine and was quite happy.”

Residents reported a great deal of commotion in the town centre as word spread of the incident.

Shouted

Rosalind Ephraim, owner of Burway Books in Beaumont Road, said she first heard about the stabbings at 3pm.

She said: “A lady came into the store and told me someone had been knifed on the high street.

“Then ambulances, police and the air ambulance arrived. Forensic teams came and closed down Sandford Avenue.”

A Church Stretton office worker, who did not want to be named but saw the incident from a window, said the man went up to Mrs Parton and stabbed her.

“Then he walked around the corner and stabbed himself in the neck. There were quite a few people on the street and we heard a lot of noise going on.

“Then someone shouted ‘he’s got a knife, he’s got a knife’.”

A worker at AS Morris & Son, funeral directors in Sandford Avenue, said there was a lot of noise and people shouting.

He said: “It was unusual, I can’t really describe it. It wasn’t a noise you would normally expect to hear.”

The worker continued: “The next thing four police cars turned up outside. It’s a bit of a shock.”

Haze

The landlord of a Church Stretton pub today expressed his shock at the stabbing.

Gary Medlicott, landlord at the Green Dragon pub in Little Stretton, said he had heard about what happened at a local petrol station yesterday afternoon after the drama unfolded just a few minute’s drive away in Church Stretton.

He added: “It’s been a haze.”