Interview - Ashley Murray: 'The next thing I knew, I had been stabbed in the face'

IT MUST never happen again. The words have been echoing ever since a courtroom heard in graphic detail of the horrifying campaign of abuse two brothers inflicted on two young boys in woods near Edlington.

Ashley Murray had heard the words before. They were uttered after he was left for dead at a remote Yorkshire beauty spot by two boys – 11 years ago.

Now with a full-time job, a flat in Harrogate town centre, a girlfriend and a determination to improve his golf, Mr Murray enjoys a lifestyle similar to many other 24-year-old men.

But he knows he is lucky to be alive. On the night of Sunday, January 17, 1999, two school friends took him to a nature reserve near Harrogate, stabbed him 18 times, wrapped him in a binliner and ran away.

He was discovered 40 hours later, on the Tuesday

afternoon, when a dog walker found him paralysed, suffering from dehydration and hypothermia, and barely able to speak.

Mr Murray, who was 13 at the time, rarely thinks about how he was set upon with a knife by Daniel Gill and Robert Fuller, then aged 14 and 15, but his memories of the fateful night are still vivid.

Like the Edlington torturers, Ashley's attackers had watched a violent movie – the film Scream – before they carried out their twisted plan.

And as the sentences given for the South Yorkshire attack – a minimum of five years – are to be reviewed by the Attorney General, Ashley remembers his own fight to keep Gill and Fuller behind bars.

The pair were each sentenced to six years' detention after being found guilty of attempted murder, but they were given parole after serving barely half that time.

Mr Murray said: "In their minds, when they left me there, I was dead and it should have been treated as such.

"But one of them served three years and the other served three-and-a-half. That was the hardest part for me."

Mr Murray spent an arduous nine months in hospital as he underwent multiple operations, but he remembers that finding the ability to trust people again was as hard. If he saw someone even with a bread knife in the kitchen he feared he might be attacked again.

"I missed a lot of school," he said. "When I went back, I went there from hospital for two days a week with a nurse by my side because of the trust issues.

"Because I had missed so much schooling, and because it was supposedly my best friend and a friend of his who had done this, going back to that school was hard."

Mr Murray passed his GCSEs and attained a GNVQ qualification in IT. He now works full-time in IT sales and has moved on, although the physical scars are still there.

He remains partially paralysed down his left side, has a limp and requires a leg brace to walk. He can barely use his left hand, and the big toe of his right foot was so frost-bitten that it had to be amputated two years after the attack.

Mr Murray said: "I don't really think about my injuries now and I wouldn't want to.

"I live alone now, even though the doctors told me I would never walk again, and I have a girlfriend. I go out with friends and I do all the normal things that people my age do."

It was Mr Murray's determination to pull through that helped him survive.

The boys had planned to break into a bird-watching hut at Birk Crag, a nature reserve near where they all lived.

"We met at about 7pm," Mr Murray said, "We tried to break in, but we couldn't get in so someone said 'Let's go around to the bottom of the crag.'

"They told me to go down first because it was dark. One of them had a record bag and I remember hearing it being opened.

"The next thing I knew, I had been stabbed in the face."

By 9.30pm, Gill and Fuller had run away and left Mr Murray at the bottom of the crag. They believed he was dead.

"I couldn't move," Mr Murray said, "but I was just lying there thinking about how I was going to get out.

"I thought back to television programmes I had watched about how to survive in difficult conditions, and I did some of the things I remembered from them.

"I remember licking the rainwater off my jacket, I wet myself to keep myself warm and I tried to keep thinking about things.

"I wasn't at at all confident that I was going to be rescued, but I never thought that I was going to die there."

Mr Murray had been stabbed 18 times, including 11 times in the head, and he had a collapsed lung and broken ribs, but he was still breathing when an elderly man's dog found him and licked his face.

The survival tactics had worked and help was on its way.

Mr Murray said: "I remember the police asking me who had done this to me and I kept saying 'Gilly and Fuller', but, because of my injuries, it was about 15 minutes before they could make out the words."

They were difficult words to say. Mr Murray and Gill had been best friends at Rossett High School and had known each other for about three years, with Mr Murray even staying at Gill's house twice a week.

Since the attack he has even seen both Gill and Fuller in Harrogate, but has simply had to get on with his life.

"It taught me quite a big lesson. When I went back to school I appreciated it a bit more.

"I definitely missed the sports side of things, which I could not get involved in but I appreciated the other things about school. The mistake I made was getting involved in the wrong crowd at an age when I would not really know the difference.

"I remember what life was like before the attack, but you have to get on with it and accept it, say 'That's life' and have a good time."