Heather Mills
- Profession: Gold digger
- Place/Date of Birth: Aldershot, Hampshire, 12 January 2021
- Associated with: Paul McCartney
She said: "I panicked and thought ’I’ll go back the other way’ and that’s when I turned round and saw Mr Kaycappa.
"I felt concerned ... because I had one there and one there and I felt like a trapped animal."
She told prosecutor Dale Sullivan: "I felt a hand on my shoulder. He yanked me round. He hauled me round because I wasn’t letting him get that picture."
She said the assault left her with a damaged vertebra which requires regular treatment by a chiropractor.
Heather was accused of lying about the assault by Kaycappa’s defence lawyer Anya Lewis.
Photographs taken by Kaycappa appear to show her leaving the subway by the south exit. She told the court she left by the north exit to escape Kaycappa and cycled to a cafe.
Father-of-three Kaycappa denies two charges of assaulting Heather and her American friend Mark Payne the following evening.
Heather felt ’like trapped animal’ - June 22 2007
The estranged wife of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney has said she felt like a "trapped animal" when cornered by photographers in a subway.
Heather Mills-McCartney was giving evidence in the trial of freelance photographer Jay Kaycappa, who is charged with assaulting her.
Brighton Magistrates Court was told by prosecutor Dale Sullivan that Ms Mills-McCartney was assaulted in the subway on Brighton seafront on July 5 last year.
Kaycappa is alleged to have grabbed her right shoulder and turned her round in order to photograph her.
He denies the charge.
Under cross-examination, the former model said she wheeled her bike into the subway to escape the paparazzi and panicked when she spotted a photographer at the tunnel’s exit.
She said: "I panicked and thought I’ll go back the other way and that’s when I turned round and saw Mr Kaycappa.
"I felt concerned ... because I had one there and one there and I felt like a trapped animal so I turned into the wall to get on my phone."
Mr Sullivan said: "Since Ms Mills-McCartney and her estranged husband announced their split it would appear that members of the press have followed Ms Mills-McCartney and have waited near her home.
"The Crown say one particular photographer has been particularly persistent in following her around."
Ms Mills-McCartney, 39, avoided photographers by entering the court via a side entrance this morning. She wore a blue dress and black boots.
When giving her name to the court, she said: "My name is Heather Anne Mills-McCartney, soon to be just Mills."
Heather to give evidence in assault trial - June 20 2007
Heather Mills will give evidence in court this week against a photographer alleged to have assaulted her.
Jay Kaycappa is alleged to have attacked Sir Paul McCartney’s estranged wife in a subway under Brighton seafront on July 5 last year by grabbing her right shoulder and turning her around so that she was facing him.
Kaycappa, of The Hurdles, Fareham, Hampshire, is also accused of assaulting her companion, Mark Payne, in Brighton the following day.
Kaycappa, 31, failed to attend Brighton Magistrates’ Court in March, but in his absence the original trial date set for April 4 was rescheduled to this Thursday.
Heather’s spokesman Phil Hall said today: "Heather is going to go along to court and will be giving evidence."
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Heather Mills has definitely got one hell of a story, she was born in 1968, her mother left the family home when she nine, leaving Heather to care for her siblings under the watchful eye of an abusive father. Heather ran away from home at thirteen and found herself homeless, living under Waterloo arches for four months.
She was eventually "discovered" and started modelling, it wasn’t long after that at the age of 22, that she moved to Northern Yugoslavia, now Slovenia, for a holiday and eventually ended up moving there to build a new life and become a ski instructor. Whilst out there she witnessed the outbreak of civil war and the effect it had on many of her friends. On her return to England she set up a refugee crisis centre, funded by the modelling work that she was still doing, she continued her charity work over the next two years when tragedy struck, on a visit to the UK.
In August 1993, Heather was involved in a road accident with a police motorcycle. Her injuries included crushed ribs, a punctured lung, and multiple fractures of the pelvis and the loss of her left leg below the knee. Realising her modelling career would now possibly be over, she summoned the press into her hospital room and sold her story.
Through the adjustment of returning to ’normal’ life with one leg, Heather found a practical problem that she felt she could solve. Her residual limb, or stump as she prefers to call it, was fitted with an artificial limb. But due to the nature of the wound changing in shape and size, the prosthetic leg had to be continually replaced, whilst the old leg would be discarded. Heather realised that if the redundant prosthesis would never find another use, there must be literally thousands out there just waiting for a new home. With her experiences in the former Yugoslavia, Heather knew that these redundant limbs would be more than welcome in areas such as the Former Yugoslavia.
Heather instigated a nation-wide appeal for the donation of unwanted prostheses, and then employed the services of the inmates at Brixton prison to dismantle the limbs and make them ready for transport. October 1994, just a year after her accident, the first convoy of artificial limbs and medical equipment left for Zargreb. Arriving at the Institute of Prosthetics in Zargreb the limbs were now ready to be fitted. Over 22,000 amputees and victims of land-mine explosions have been helped since the first Convoy left the U.K.
It was not long after that at the young age of 25 that Heather wrote her biography, whilst most 25 year olds could hardly fill a chapter, Heather had a real story to tell. ’Out on a Limb’ landed straight onto The Times’ best-seller list as well as appearing in the 1997 Reader’s Digest Best non-fiction compilation. The proceeds from the book go to raising money for child amputee war victim’s world-wide (although the most publicised are in the Former Yugoslavia). All Heather’s charity work has funded from her own pocket.
Heather has been given many accolades and awards for her work for charity. Former Prime Minister John Major presented her with the Gold Award for Outstanding Achievement; The Times presented her with their Human Achievement Award, and the British Chamber of Commerce not only named her Outstanding Young Person of the Year, but also named an award after her - the Heather Mills Award. If this was not enough, in 1996 she received a nomination for The Nobel Prize and has since received the 1999 "People of the Year Award", The "Cosmopolitan Woman of Achievement 2000 Award", The "Pantene Spirit of Beauty Award" and the "Woman of the Year" by the Blue Drop Group in Sicily as well as lots more.
Heather collected the "REDBROOK Mother & Shakers Award", presented by Hillary Clinton, and she received the Victory Award hosted by the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington DC.
If that was not enough, Heather has also done a lot of TV work presenting for programmes such as That’s Esther.
In her personal life, she found temporary happiness with ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney. Despite some rather obvious objections from Paul’s daughter Stella, the couple married in 2002 and had a daughter together.
In 2006 both Paul and Heather made a joint statement confirming their separation, after Paul McCartney filed for divorce, citing ‘unreasonable behaviour’. What has followed has been a media storm, with Heather at the heart of the controversy.
The main allegations is that she merely married Sir Paul for his money and fame, with British papers suggesting that this could be the biggest divorce settlement ever witnessed. Heather has always denied the allegation of being a ‘gold digger’, claiming that the separation and process of divorce is ‘worse than losing my leg’.
Alongside her threat to sue national papers over ‘false, damaging and immensely upsetting’ reports about the divorce, it has also been reported that Heather has received death threats since splitting with her husband.
In January 2003, a settlement was announced between the two parties, believed to amount to £32 million, plus a gagging order.
November 2007