Abigail Witchalls makes Lourdes pilgrimage

Abigail Witchalls, the young mother who was left paralysed after being stabbed in an attack last year, has made a pilgrimage to the famous shrine at Lourdes, it has been reported.

The mother-of-two, who was stabbed in the neck as she walked home with her young son in Little Bookham, Surrey, last April, was pictured in 'The Sun' newspaper at the holy shrine in the foothills of Pyrenees.

Abigail, 27, was photographed at the site in her wheelchair, alongside her 28-year-old husband Benoit, while holding her second child, six-month-old Dominic, who was born seven months after the attack.

Hundreds of thousands of people visit Lourdes, where the water is believed to have healing powers, every year. More than 200 million people have made the pilgrimage to the shine in order to pray for miracles.

Lourdes, the largest Catholic pilgrimage location in France, has been a sacred site since 1858, when it is claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared to a 14-year-old girl called Bernadette Soubirous. Bernadette was canonized a Saint in 1933.

Last August, Surrey Police and the Crown Prosecution Service said that all the evidence pointed towards 23-year-old Richard Cazaly as the chief suspect in the attack on Mrs Witchalls.

Mr Cazaly, a garden centre worker who lived in Little Bookham, died in Scotland of a suspected drugs overdose eight days after the attack.

(KMcA)