Two university students were robbed and stabbed by a knife-wielding drunk who had been freed on parole from a life sentence.

The couple ran dripping with blood to the Odeon cinema following the violent mugging in a Canterbury underpass.

Their attacker, 33-year-old Dean Richards, has now been given a second term of life behind bars – and told he may never be released.

Judge Adele Williams told him: “These were truly terrifying, horrifying and cowardly attacks.

“Passing a life sentence will, in my judgement, reflect the revulsion the public feels at your crimes.”

“You may never be released and serve longer than my tariff. The sentence is life imprisonment” - Judge Adele Williams

Richards had received an indeterminate sentence in March 2009 for a series of street robberies but was paroled in August last year.

Prosecutor Deborah Charles told Canterbury Crown Court how he had been ordered to remain at a special hostel where he could be monitored and told not to drink alcohol.

But within days he had bought two knives from a Co-op store in Dover and headed to Canterbury.

On August 20 he went to Claremont Place, where a 19-year-old university student was talking to her boyfriend on her mobile phone.

Richards, carrying a half-empty wine bottle, walked by and asked her where she was from and her age before he began swearing.

He then kicked the startled woman twice in the head and then in the back and arm before she fled inside her home and called the police.

Ms Charles said Richards then approached a man and a woman in New Dover Road, Canterbury, engaging them in sex talk before revealing he’d had a death wish since he was 25.

Next he went to the St George’s Place roundabout, where he confronted two students, a man and a woman aged 20 and 18.

In a nearby underpass, Richards shouted at them, and when they turned they saw he was clutching a knife.

Without warning he then stabbed the man in the leg and arm.

“He began demanding money, telling them if they didn’t hand any over he would chase them up the street and stab them in the heart,” Ms Charles said.

“Richards said ‘I swear I will do it’.”

The terrified couple handed over £25 – but then Richards plunged the knife into the teenage girl.

The two – “dripping blood” – then fled to the Odeon Cinema to get help before running to the Waitrose car park, where the father of the male victim was waiting and took them to hospital.

Both were transferred to the William Harvey Hospital for surgery. Doctors said that if the knife gone in at a different angle, the girl’s wounds would have been life-threatening.

Richards was found hiding in a nearby courtyard with blood on his hands. A six-inch kitchen knife was found a few feet away.

The judge heard that as a result of the attack the teenage girl dropped out of university and was still suffering psychological, physical and emotional trauma.

She has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Simon Taylor, defending, said Richards, who has no fixed address, had a personality disorder.

Richards pleaded guilty to two robberies, two charges of wounding with intent, an assault, and possessing an offensive weapon.

Judge Williams told him that after going missing from his parole address he went on “a downward spiral until you were completely out of control”.

She said he will not be eligible for parole before 2024, adding: “You may never be released and serve longer than my tariff. The sentence is life imprisonment.”