She was left for dead after being stabbed while walking with her toddler son, but brave Abigail Witchalls battled against the odds and is now celebrating the birth of her baby girl.
Doctors said she had little chance of survival after being brutally stabbed in the neck by a stranger in broad daylight, but brave Abigail Witchalls refused to give up.
Now, five years on since the attack, the 31-year-old has incredibly given birth to her third child and his celebrating the good news with her husband Benoit and their two sons, Joseph, six, and Dominic, four.
‘They are really well and really happy,' said a close friend. ‘The baby is fit and healthy and everyone is over the moon.'
It was April 20, 2005, when Abigail decided to take her toddler son, Joseph, for a walk in the leafy village of Little Bookham and her attacker struck. She was pregnant at the time.
She was brutally stabbed in the neck, the blade severing her spinal chord and leaving her paralysed. At the time, doctors feared she could die within two days.
But Abigail continued to fight, and for the next six months she remained on a ventilator with a tracheotomy to allow her to breathe in the Spinal Injuries Unit at the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital in Stanmore, Middlesex.
Since then, she has regained fluent speech and recently described her survival as a ‘miracle'.
Abigail's attacker is thought to have been Richard Cazaly, a 23-year-old public schoolboy who was reported to have been high on alcohol and drugs.
He killed himself eight days after the attack through a fatal overdose. Police confirmed that he would have been charged with attempted murder if he hadn't committed suicide.
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