Stabbed Hurley boy: My debt to ‘Aunt Minx’
Chased through the streets. Knifed. Left bleeding in the gutter. And all after a minor road prang. Liz Hurley’s model nephew gives f irst dramatic account of his ordeal – and tells how ‘Aunt Minx’ came to his rescue
LOOKING at Miles Hurley, it is clear good genes run in the family. The tousle-haired nephew of British actress and model Elizabeth Hurley, himself a model for top fashion houses Dolce & Gabbana and Roberto Cavalli, is effortlessly handsome in a white designer T-shirt and jeans to make the most of the spring sunshine.
If he appears a little pale, or winces a little as he shifts his weight in the wooden outdoor chair, he glosses over it with a good-natured charm.
It is hard to imagine that it’s just a few weeks since Miles, terrified, was hiding beneath a parked van in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood from two deep stab wounds to his back, praying he would not be discovered
It was a kind of horror that Miles, 21, could never have possibly imagined. Nor could he have anticipated that he would become yet another knife crime statistic during a year which has seen London’s murder rate overtake New York for the first time.
In an ordeal which made headlines across the country, Miles and a friend were pursued in a highspeed car chase by a group of young men after the most minor of traffic collisions.
They were assaulted, stabbed with a large kitchen knife and, as he explains today in his first dramatic interview, he came just millimetres from death.
His words will make difficult reading for parents everywhere.
‘I had a guardian angel that night,’ he says, simply. ‘I lost six pints of blood. The doctors thought I’d perforated my liver and clipped one of my major arteries. But everything they feared could have happened, didn’t. They said I was stabbed twice, in the same place. That the knife didn’t hit my spinal cord or arteries all came down to angles and millimetres.’
So violent were his assailants, they first attempted to force him into the boot of his own car, threatening abduction and an unspeakable fate, before plunging the knife four inches into his back.
It is a minor miracle that he managed to escape, or that he is with us here today.
It was the presence of a quickthinking Good Samaritan – who called an ambulance and gave Miles his jumper to put pressure on the wound – that caused the attackers to flee the scene.
And it was Auntie Elizabeth – known affectionately in the family as ‘Minx’ – who he rang first from his hospital bed, who flew from New York to be by his side, and who has been posting updates on his condition on Instagram.
It is at Elizabeth Hurley’s £6million Herefordshire estate where Miles has been recovering from his wound, a broad, livid red slash which crosses over his spine on his lower back. Still fresh, it stopped bleeding only last week after becoming infected, but he knows he is surrounded by family. His mother Katie Hurley, 54, Elizabeth’s elder sister, lives in a three-bedroom cottage on the same estate.
Reliving his ordeal today, Miles sits awkwardly, clearly in some discomfort, his hands shaking almost imperceptibly. He admits he is lucky to be alive.
His mother, sitting by his side, is in tears at some of the more graphic details, some of which she is only now hearing herself for the first time. Miles, too, remains in shock. ‘I’m not sleeping well. During the day you’re distracted but at night you’re alone with your thoughts,’ he says. ‘You never think this sort of thing can happen to you. I hadn’t come into contact with this kind of violence before. It wasn’t something I thought about. You assume it stays between gangs, but it doesn’t. No-one can escape it.
‘I’m wary about coming back to London because my attackers are still out there. But I’m determined to come back because I love the city and if I let them affect my life then they’ve won.’
Miles grew up in South West London with Katie, a single mother, and his older sister Amelia, 23, and has always been close to Auntie Elizabeth, who he describe as ‘my second mum’. From time to time, he works as a farm labourer on her estate.
He attended the fee-paying Emanuel School in Battersea but even a prestigious education was no protection from the culture of gangs and knife crime that has taken such a hold in London. His
He said: Give me your keys and get in the **** ing boot