Angel Lynn: Mum felt someone 'ripped her heart out' when being told daughter won't survive
Angel Lynn's mother told ITV News' Ellie Pitt of how she hopes her daughter will one day be able to come home
The mum of Angel Lynn, who suffered life-changing injuries during a kidnapping, described how it felt like someone “ripped her heart out” when doctors said she wouldn’t survive.
Angel, 21, was left paralysed and unable to talk after she was bundled into a van by ex-boyfriend Chay Bowskill on September 17, 2020.
Amid hope of finally bringing her daughter home from hospital, Nikki Lynn told ITV News she “couldn’t believe it was happening” to her family when Angel’s life was in doubt.
“I felt like it wasn’t happening to us, I thought this can’t be happening, it can’t,” she said.
“I sort of in a way didn’t really believe, I said ‘don’t you turn off the machines, don’t you let her die, keep her alive’.
“And they said she isn’t going to survive.”
'I just felt like someone had ripped my heart out'
Angel has been briefly taken off a ventilator for only a few minutes at a time – first two minutes, then four, and she made it to six, Nikki said.
But the good news was soon tempered.
“Then they’d ring me again and say Angel still isn’t responding, she’s not doing anything. She isn’t going to make it, Nikki,” she said.
“I was absolutely just... just heartbroken really, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what my feelings really were, I just felt like someone had ripped my heart out.”
Angel is unable to speak, walk or feed herself and needs 24-hour care at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, where she'll soon have communication equipment fitted to her wheelchair.
It's hoped this will allow her to tap sentences with her right hand.
She is still being fed through a tube in her stomach, but she is allowed to lick one ice lolly a week to try to improve her swallowing.
CCTV footage shows Bowskill running after her, grabbing her and carrying her back to the transit van that was then driven away by his friend Rocco Sansome - shortly before she ended up injured on the A6 near Mountsorrel in Leicestershire at 10.45am.
The video was played in court, where Bowskill and Sansome were both convicted, but Nikki said she couldn’t bear to watch it then.
“I didn’t watch it for a while and I used to leave the court room when they said they were going to show videos,” she said.
“And then I stayed one day and thought I’m going to have to watch it.
"I was absolutely... I was upset and angry."
'I used to leave the court room when they said they were going to show videos'
Nikki hopes she can come home soon, after extension plans were approved for their house.
A crowdfunding page set up to help the family with the building work has already raised £150,000.
Her family hopes any leftover money will help pay for specialist medical equipment to support Angel's long-term rehabilitation. A Facebook page has also been set up.
Angel's dad Paddy told GMB earlier on Wednesday: “Everybody that's donated on the GoFundMe, we've got local builders that are going to do the work for free and everyone has just been brilliant.”
Bowskill, 20, from Syston, Leicestershire, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in January after being convicted of kidnap, coercive and controlling behaviour, and perverting the course of justice, following a trial at Leicester Crown Court.
His accomplice, Sansome, also aged 20, of Birstall, Leicestershire, was also found guilty of kidnap and sentenced to 21 months in prison.
As part of the sentencing review, the jail term handed to Bowskill for kidnapping Angel has gone up from three years three months to 12 years, which he will continue to serve at a Young Offenders' Institution.