Police free couple held in UK stabbing case

Police investigating an attack on a young mother left paralysed after being stabbed in front of her toddler son in a quiet rural…

Police investigating an attack on a young mother left paralysed after being stabbed in front of her toddler son in a quiet rural English village have released a man and a woman they arrested as part of the inquiry.

Abigail Witchalls, 26, was attacked on Wednesday while out pushing her two-year-old son Joseph in a buggy along a quiet lane in Little Bookham, Surrey, an area described by police as "one of the safest corners of the safest counties in England".

This morning it emerged Ms Witchalls was pregnant, expecting her second child, when she was attacked.

She suffered a three inch stab wound to the back of her neck and is stable but critically ill in a south London hospital.

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A woman, 29, and a 28-year-old man, went to police voluntarily on Friday after detectives said they were keen to trace a couple seen speeding towards the scene in a blue Peugeot car minutes before the attack.

The arrested couple were both released on Saturday. "Detectives investigating the attack on Abigail Witchalls released the female in custody without charge and eliminated her from the inquiry," a Surrey police spokeswoman said.

The man, whose blue Peugeot car was seized by police, was released on police bail pending further inquiries. Earlier yesterday Witchalls's father Martin Hollins said the attack had been tremendous shock but his daughter was now communicating with her family using facial expressions.

"Fortunately we have some hope but initially we had absolutely no hope at all," he said.

"She's communicated enough for us to know she knows quite a lot about her condition which is very serious and almost certainly long term disabling. "She is very seriously paralysed at the moment. But she's communicated to us somehow she has the strength of spirit to cope with that."

Detective Superintendent Adrian Harper, who is heading a team of more than 150 officers involved in the inquiry, has said there was no clear motive for the attack which could have been utterly random or a robbery gone wrong.

News of the stabbing has shocked the local community in the sleepy village near the Surrey county town of Guildford.