Woman jumps 40ft to escape burglars

An artist is in a serious condition in hospital today after leaping 40 feet from her kitchen window to escape burglars.

Rebecca Newman, 30, had answered the door to her flat to a man claiming to be from the gas board.

After letting him in, the Slade School of Fine Art graduate became aware that another man had also entered the flat. When she asked them to leave they beat her around the head in the attack at 6.20pm on Thursday.

Paramedics took Mrs Newman to a south London hospital where her condition is described as serious but stable. Her father James Cartwright, a barrister, said: "She will survive and she is not brain-damaged."

Neighbour Cila McGovern, who lives above the Newmans in Honor Oak, Peckham, said she saw people running to help Mrs Newman as she lay on the concrete. She added: "She had blood coming from her mouth and said that she couldn't move her legs. They were trying to put her on a stretcher but she was in real pain.

"Eventually her husband, Stefan, came, I think after finishing work. He was trying to comfort her."

In a bizarre twist the two suspects in the attack were held by police after jumping from a fourth-floor window during a similar incident the next day. They are suspected of pushing their way into the flat of a woman in her seventies before being scared off by neighbours at the Guinness Trust flats in Marshalsea Road.

The two men, who are in their late twenties, made off in a car which crashed after their route was blocked by the driver of a JCB. The elderly victim was not injured in the attack but suffered shock.