DETECTIVES are convinced that they have enough evidence about the attack on Abigail Witchalls to submit a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Surrey Police’s decision to send the file on Richard Cazaly, who committed suicide a few days after the vicious attack in Little Bookham, Surrey, in April, was made even though Mrs Witchalls, who was left paralysed, failed to pick him out of a photographic line-up this week.

Also this week Mrs Witchalls, 26, left intensive care and is breathing without a ventilator.

Detectives say that the inconclusive line-up had not changed their belief that Mr Cazaly is their main suspect, because only 39 per cent of the victims with which Surrey Police deal are able to pick out their attacker at an identity parade.

If the CPS decides that under normal circumstances it would recommend Mr Cazaly be prosecuted, then officers can close the case. A Surrey Police spokeswoman said: “We are of the mind that we have good evidence that links Richard Cazaly to the attack. We would not be sending the file to the CPS if we didn’t think we had good enough evidence.”

But she added that another suspect, a 25-year-old man, had not formally been ruled out.

A spokeswoman for the CPS said: “Once we have looked at all the evidence we have to decide if there would be sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of prosecution and if it is in the public interest.

“It may be that we tell the police that they have to gather more information or they may have enough. We don’t know until we see the evidence.”

Mrs Witchalls was left for dead after being stabbed in the back of her neck as she walked home from a mother and toddler group with her 21-month-old son, Joseph.

She had been able to communicate with police and her family only through blinks and nods.

After being transferred from St George’s Hospital, southwest London, to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust in Stanmore, North London, there has been considerable improvement in her condition.

The hospital said yesterday that Mrs Witchalls had been moved out of intensive care into a spinal injuries unit and can now breathe without the aid of a ventilator. But it could be some months before doctors know whether she will recover further.

The hospital said in a statement yesterday: “Abigail is making significant progress and is now breathing without the aid of a ventilator during the daytime and can talk to her family and the hospital staff. But it is quite a physical effort and she gets rather tired.

“Abigail regularly sits up in a chair for short periods with some assistance.”

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