THE family of loving father-of-three Tommy Grace has described the devastating impact his murder has had on their lives.

Tommy was stabbed to death in a frenzied attack by Dale Murray in Prescot last year.

Murray, 32, a schizophrenic, repeatedly knifed Mr Grace in the neck in a “merciless” attack during a chance street encounter in Prescot in October last year, Liverpool Crown Court heard. He was found guilty by a jury on Monday.

A judge ordered  Murray, who launched the ferocious attack just days after being freed from a jail sentence – during which he thrust a broken cup into a cellmate’s neck after smoking Spice – to serve a minimum of 23 years in prison.

In an impact statement, Mr Grace’s sister, Paula Murphy, today told how his death had had “a traumatic effect upon their entire family.

“Ever since the day of Tommy’s death we have lost a little bit of our mother, its almost as though she too died that day.”

She stated that Mr Grace’s three children, including his 14-year-old ‘little princess’ daughter, are struggling and she and her sisters “have lost our only brother, our best friend".

She added: “Since this none of us have been able to adjust, we have had time off work and had to see our doctors because of the effect this has had on us.

“One year on and we still struggle to accept this has happened, we still see people and think its Tommy. As a family we have lost a brother, a son, a best friend, a father to his children. Our mother is 81 and is now a shell of her former self.”

Murray, a heroin addict, of no fixed address, who has 80 previous convictions for 184 offences spanning the last two decades including violence and possessing weapons, had admitted possessing the knife which killed Mr Grace, known as Tommy, just six minutes after the victim left Dean’s House pub in Eccleston Street, Prescot.

The jury of five women and seven men heard that Mr Grace, who left the Deane's House pub, where he was a popular customer, at 9.15pm, had been “apparently happy and without a care in the world"

While walking to his nearby home in Beaconsfield he encountered Murray walking in the opposite direction and there was a trivial short lived altercation and they then carried on their respective ways.

But within 90 seconds Murray turned back on himself armed with the knife and a fight broke out during which Mr Grace swung a shopping bag at him. But Murray lunged at his neck stabbing him five times and cutting his jugular veins.