An asylum-seeker was stabbed to death the day before he was due to open a restaurant and start a new life.

Iranian Peiman Bahmani, who died in a Sunderland street, had planned to move to Brighton today and open the restaurant with his girlfriend Sonia Voza.

However, hours before he was due to leave Sunderland, Mr Bahmani was murdered outside his home in what police are treating as a racist attack.

Today Ms Voza's daughter Francesca, 22, said her mother's life had been wrecked.

She said: "My Mum and her boyfriend were due to move to Brighton. They had made plans to open a restaurant there. Instead, today she has gone to lay flowers at the spot where he died. She is heartbroken."

Her mother said: "All Peiman ever wanted was a happy life and his own business. He worked very hard when he came to this country and is well-known to everyone in the restaurant business in the city."

She said Mr Bahmani was killed after stepping in to stop friends being attacked by a racist gang.

"He was a lovely man. He wouldn't hurt anyone."

Ms Voza said Mr Bahmani, who fled to Britain from his native Iran two years ago, had been like a dad to daughter and her younger son, David, 20.

Four people have been arrested in connection with his murder. Police have yet to officially identify him but his details were released by ethnic rights organisation, The Monitoring Group.

Mr Bahmani, who died on Wednesday from a single stab-wound, was born in Shiraz into a wealthy family.

He had worked as a pipe fitter in the Iranian oil field before coming to England where he was granted a work permit by the Home Office and began work in Sonia Voza's restaurant.