Teen left paralysed after abusive boyfriend’s kidnapping stands for first time

Angel Lynn, now 21, has been improving after being moved to a rehabilitation unit (Pictures: SWNS)

A teenager who couldn’t walk or talk after her abusive boyfriend kidnapped her has stood up for the first time.

Angel Lynn, now 21, was left paralysed and brain damaged after she fell out of her kidnapper’s van in September 2020.

Mum Nikki, 48, said her daughter is now defying expectations and has stood up for the first time since the attack.

Angel has even chosen clothes on a shopping spree and can answer questions such as ‘what car do you want’ on an iPad, Nikki told The Sun.

She was just 19 when Chay Bowskill, 20, at the time, grabbed her and forced her into a van driven by his friend Rocco Sansome, also 20 at the time.

Harrowing CCTV footage shows Angel struggling to get out of Bowskill’s grip as he carries her across the road and into the parked silver vehicle.

Sansome was going along the A6, near Loughborough, at 60mph when Angel somehow fell out and her head ‘bounced like a football’ on the road.

The young girl was just 19 when she fell from the van and was paralysed (Picture: SWNS)

Doctors feared she would not survive, and was given her last rites on the three occasions.

But Angel has shocked everyone time and time again with her progress.

Nikki, a mum-of-six, said: ‘Angel is communicating more and more. I know it won’t change things but I’m hoping one day she will speak and tell me what happened.’

Angel was moved from Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham to a rehabilitation unit, which has not been named for her safety, where staff are ‘doing wonders’.

Nikki said: ‘When Angel went into the rehab unit, I couldn’t see any future with her getting better. But she has improved so much it’s unbelievable. Angel is definitely in there.

‘She’s a really strong girl. She is determined. She was always like that from a kid. If she wanted to do something, she’d find a way to make it happen. We will get there. I will do everything we can. I won’t stop until the day I die.’

Nikki, who visits her daughter every day, took her shopping where she ‘pointed like mad at Calvin Klein, knew exactly what she wanted and spent a fortune’.

The devoted mum even makes sure Angel still gets her hair and nails done because she knows it would be important to her.

Angel ‘loved her life’ before she started dating Bowskill and ‘everything changed’ (Picture: PA)

Chay Bowskill, 20, was eventually jailed for 12 years (Picture: PA)

Nikki, from from Loughborough, Leicestershire, also spoke about her belief that Bowskill pushed Angel out of the van ‘because of the injuries she suffered, the force with which she hit the ground’.

This is something the prosecution could not prove during the trial.

The devastated parent opened up about her daughter’s abusive relationship with Bowskill, who was convicted of kidnap, coercive and controlling behaviour and perverting the course of justice.

Nikki said: ‘Angel loved her life. Then it just changed. She stopped going to college. She didn’t see her friends or hang out with her brothers and sisters. She was always with him.’

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When Bowskill served a prison sentence for burglary during his relationship with Angel, he demanded she be home by 6pm every night so he could call her on her landline.

She eventually made the brave decision to leave Bowskill, after he threw her against a wall, and was getting her life back on track before they had an argument in September 2020, which ended in the kidnapping.

Bowskill, of Empingham Drive, Syston, Leicestershire, was initially jailed for seven and a half years, but this was increased to 12 years last May at the Court of Appeal.

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Doctors feared she would not survive after suffering such bad brain damage in 2020.