Young mother still critical as hunt continues for knife attacker

Surrey Police have said that they have received “very significant” information regarding the attack on twenty-six-year-old Abigail Witchalls yesterday.

Police said that three landscape gardeners, travelling in a white transit lorry in the area just before Mrs Witchalls was attacked, almost collided with an “older” style blue Peugeot car, driving in the opposite direction. The gardeners said that the car was “out of keeping with the neighbourhood”.

There were two occupants in the car, the gardeners said – a white man who was driving and was described as being in his 20s, clean-shaven but with some stubble, wearing earrings and a gold chain around his neck and a white female around the same age, who was of slim build and had blonde shoulder length hair.

The gardeners also told police that they saw a female pushing a buggy, who they said had dark hair and was wearing a three-quarter length beige coat or cardigan. However, police have said that they do not believe this was Abigail.

Police said that these people could be “very significant” to the inquiry and either could be involved or could have witnessed the attack. They have been urged to come forward.

Abigail, a part-time English language teacher from Maddox Farm, Little Bookham, Surrey, was attacked on Wednesday afternoon in Little Bookham, as she pushed her young son Joseph in his buggy. A neighbour, Robert Hall, who was alerted to the incident by her screams, found her. He told reporters that when he found Abigail “blood was coming out of her nose and she could not move her head, only her eyes”.

The only description police have of her attacker is that he is white. Some reports have said that the man asked Mrs Witchalls for money before he attacking her. However, police say they are keeping a “very open mind” on what the motive for the attack may have been.

A weapon has yet to be found.

Mrs Witchalls was taken to St Georges Hospital in Tooting, where she remains in a critical condition. Her father-in-law James Witchalls told reporters that Abigail had been stabbed in the neck, “right below the vertebrae”. A family friend also told reporters that Abigail was conscious, but was paralysed from the neck down and could only communicate by blinking.

Police have said that they are determined to find Mrs Witchalls attacker. Yesterday, Detective Superintendent Adrian Harper from Surrey Police described the attack as “particularly distressing”, but stressed that the type of attack was “extremely rare” in that area and said that there had been no other similar incidents.

(KMcA/GB)