Boat crash victim has prosthetic legs stolen by moped gang
MOPED thieves stole £30,000 prosthetic limbs from a widow whose leg had to be amputated after a speedboat accident that killed her husband and daughter.
Victoria Milligan, 45, was having dinner with friends when two armed men on scooters broke into her car and took the three prosthetic legs.
Mrs Milligan lost her left leg below the knee in 2013 after a boat crash in Cornwall that killed her 51-yearold husband Nick and their daughter Emily, eight.
Her specially cast prosthetic legs – worth almost £30,000 – were taken from her Audi Q5 in Fulham, West London, on Sunday by thieves who were carrying knives. The limbs, which were in a grey suitcase, are useless to anyone else.
Mrs Milligan said: ‘It’s just so upsetting because they are so valuable to me, and so bespoke that you can’t just go out and buy some more. My leg needs to be recast and the legs remade which will take about three months.
‘I think what they would have just done obviously is scooted off and opened it and then just dumped them somewhere.
‘We came out, there was a witness, a guy in a van and he said two men on scooters with knives smashed the window and opened the car and got into the boot and took the bag.
‘It was quite a big heavy bag so they probably thought they were going to get something quite valuable, but what they probably didn’t account for was three legs.
‘I think what they would have done when they opened the bag is just dump the legs somewhere as they have no resale value.’
On the 2013 May Day bank holiday, Mrs Milligan and her family were returning their boat to its mooring in the Camel Estuary near Padstow when it sped out of control, throwing them overboard. The boat then circled over them at high speed, killing her Sky TV executive husband and their daughter.
Mrs Milligan’s nine-year- old son Kit needed 20 operations to save his leg while daughter Amber, 16, was left with scars on her left thigh and hand. Only Olivia, 14, survived unscathed.
The stolen prosthetics include a blade Mrs Milligan uses for her work as a personal trainer and motivational speaker, as well as a mid-heel leg and a limb specially made for high heels. She said: ‘These legs make me feel like the Victoria before the accident, allowing me to run and even wear heels again.
‘They are like works of art, my prosthetist and his team at The London Prosthetic Centre are geniuses, exactly matching my remaining leg down to the right skin tone and hand painted freckles.
‘They are so important to me and I feel very lost without them, it is horrendous.
‘They take about three months each to make, it’s a very difficult thing to match the skin tone, freckles are hand painted onto the legs.
‘They allow me to be who I was, emotionally I feel very different without them.
‘I was wearing my everyday leg at the time, but these other three are amazing.
‘I keep thinking to myself why did I take all the legs with me that day, but I thought I might go for a run and I didn’t know what shoes I was going to wear to the party the night before.
‘It’s not like you just have to take different pairs of shoes, you have to take different legs as well.’
Mrs Milligan said police have told her that CCTV of the area might not have covered the theft, and the legs could have been dumped and so never be found. She said: ‘It’s very frustrating, it was broad daylight and we came out of the restaurant and they said two minutes before these people had broken into my car.
‘My friend who lives up the road says it happens quite a lot, there’s a climbing centre nearby and quite often mums are picking up children and have handbags on the seat which these guys are smashing windows to get. They are opportunists, they wouldn’t have a clue my legs were in there but I would have hoped once they saw them they would have handed them in somewhere.
‘They are so specific to me, the socket on these legs has been made to every tiny bump and bone on my leg and they cannot be worn be any other person.’
Anyone with information is urged to contact police or Mrs Milligan via her website, victoriamilligan.co.uk.
‘I feel very lost without them’