Art student paralysed by random knife attack in street

A STUDENT tipped to be a fashion designer has been left paralysed after being stabbed in a random attack.

Oliver Hemsley, then 20, was set upon by a gang of youths as he walked with a flatmate in Shoreditch.

He had just been accepted at the prestigious St Martin's School of Art but the attack ended his fashion career.

Oliver, known as Oli, had up to eight stab wounds, mostly to his lungs and heart, in the attack last August.

His brother Will said he looked like "a watering can". He was taken to the Royal London Hospital by air ambulance and "died" on arrival but was revived several minutes later by doctors. It was not until later he was also found to have been knifed in the neck which led to an infection of his spinal cord which spread to his brain.

Oliver, now 21, went into a coma and doctors feared brain damage.

But since regaining consciousness he came off a ventilator in January and though paralysed from the neck down is making an "inspirational" recovery.

One of his attackers, a youth aged 15 at the time, appeared in a London crown court today.

He has pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent and having an offensive weapon and has two other outstanding charges from the youth court of robbery and common assault. The schoolboy, now 16, of Shoreditch, has an IQ of 56 which is extremely low and renders him vulnerable with a learning disability.

Judge Roger Chapple adjourned sentence until next month so a psychiatric report could be prepared into whether he is fit to face the court. Prosecutor Catherine Milson told the court that there was "not enough evidence to charge anybody else over the attack".

Outside court Will Hemsley, a 26-year-old banker, spoke of the shock felt by his family, who come from a small village outside Ely, Cambridgeshire.

He said: "Oli was not a member of a gang, he was just a normal person walking down the street and had his life taken away from him. His friend was pushed to one side and he was stabbed from behind. It was completely at random and unprovoked.

"It is inspirational the way he has dealt with this whole thing. He doesn't sit there and say 'why me?' He sits there and says 'what do I have to do to get to the next level?'

"Last week we sat outside together in the sunshine and he was able to have a chat - even a laugh and a joke."

A judge warned that London is becoming "increasingly dangerous" as he jailed five men for stabbing a youth to death. Trainee mechanic Jevon Henry, 18, was stabbed in the heart in St John's Wood in a drugs war between two gangs. Judge Giles Forrester said the killing was "cowardly and wicked".