30 December 1999: George Harrison is attacked at his Friar Park home.
Michael (Mick) Abram, a mentally ill man born in 1966 in Huyton, Liverpool, had scaled a perimeter wall and walked up the drive to the mock-Gothic mansion. Although security cameras were positioned by the main gates and the back entrance, the boundary fence in parts of the grounds was in a state of such disrepair that it was easy for an intruder to gain access.
Back in 1999, two years before his death from cancer, George Harrison and his wife Olivia Harrison were attacked by an intruder at their home in Henley-on-Thames.
Michael Abram stabbed the Beatles legend dozens of times including in his chest, but luckily the star survived the attack.
According to The Mirror, she told Private Passions: “He had notes in a pocket right over his heart and he had them folded.
“You can only fold paper so many times.”
“He had them folded and stuck in the pocket and it’s what saved him... Gardening notes and lyrics were his passions and they saved his life.”
On attacking Abram with a lamp to defend Harrison, his 75-year-old pacifist widow said: “I had to react. I would not be talking to you now [if I hadn’t]. In the brutality of that knife attack was also the fact you have to renounce what you believe and fight back.
We were told George was stabbed several times with what we assume was a knife and that Olivia was hit over the head. We don’t know if they were asleep when the intruder made his way into their home. God knows how he got through the security around the house. Apparently they both fought back hard against the attack. Thank God that they both appear to be stable in hospital. We are all totally shocked that a second Beatle has been attacked. Nothing like this has happened before to George to make him worried about his safety.
THE attack came exactly 19 years after Mark Chapman gunned down John Lennon in Manhattan. "After what happened to John I'm absolutely terrified," Harrison has said. Before John's death the gates to his mock-gothic folly were always open: afterwards they were closed. But he has denied living a Howard Hughes existence: Citizen Kane might be nearer the mark given the gargoyles
"I just don't go to discos where gossip columnists hang out. I didn't do TV chat shows or things like that. So they keep thinking I am some Howard Hughes. But I was going out all the time. I go out with friends, go to dinner, go to parties. It's all a joke," he has said. The message got across, and more recently he smilingly lamented that "the press don't see me as weird any more".
Harrison tried throwing himself onto Abram as he ran up the stairs to attack the artist. Abram, however, had a knife in his hand and stabbed Harrison multiple times in the chest. He then attacked Harrison’s wife when she tried to get him off her husband. Eventually, she was able to subdue Abram by striking him with a brass lamp. The songwriter, however, later testified that at that point, he “could feel the strength draining from” his body and believed he was dying.
Andrew Pengelly - Medical director, Royal Berkshire Hospital - He has been stabbed on the right hand side of the chest, with the blade entering just below his collarbone. The knife narrowly missed a blood vessel connecting the heart and the head. If that had been ruptured, he would have perished within a matter of minutes from internal bleeding. He was extremely lucky. If the knife had gone in more than a centimetre either side, then it could have hit some very dangerous things, such as large blood vessels.
Surgeons battled to save the musician, and part of his partially-collapsed right lung was removed. He was given 12 stitches to the wound, and once his condition stabilised he was transferred to Harefield Hospital in Uxbridge, Middlesex.
Harefield was a leading centre for chest conditions. Harrison was given a private room during his stay, and his health was monitored for a further 48 hours.
The main stab wound was a very, very small distance from a main vein and it was only by chance that his injuries were not life threatening. The second stab wound to his chest was less serious.
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