‘It was 15 seconds of hell’: West End star blinded after random street attack from armed robber
‘It was 15 seconds of hell’: West End star blinded after random street attack from armed robber
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‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ actor will undergo three operations to save eyesight. A West End actor has been blinded in his right eye after an armed attacker violently smashed through his van window with a metal object in what was thought to be an attempted robbery.
![[Mike Holoway pictured with his wife Emma in 2018]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/27/08/GettyImages-930504326-1.jpg)
On 18 December, Mike Holoway, 63, was sitting at a set of traffic lights in Beckton, East London, when an attacker broke through the driver’s side window, with Holoway’s head and face taking the force of the blow. The actor, who starred in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat for four years, has revealed that he needed stitches in his eyeball and will undergo three operations over nine months to save his eyesight.
The actor said he believed the attacker was holding a metal, weighted object that could have been a knuckle duster. He said: “This man smashed his fist through the driver’s side window. Straight into my face, it knocked me across to the passenger seat.
“I had to have metallic fragments pulled out of my face. “You think you know how you can react in these situations. But I saw stars. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. “By the time I picked myself up and got my momentum, I reached for my phone to take a picture of the reg plate, but he’d gone. He smashed straight through the window into my face.”.
Holoway recounted that he was guided to safety by a witness named Bobby, who made sure he got to a hospital. The actor was taken to A&E in Essex before he was moved to Moorfields Eye Hospital in central London for surgery after examinations showed extensive damage to his eye.
