George Harrison's 'Dying' Testimony

By Stephen M. Silverman

07/01/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Ex-Beatle George Harrison told a British court yesterday about his life-or-death struggle with a man who stabbed him in the chest with a seven-inch knife last December. "I thought I was dying," Harrison, 57, testified on the first day of the trial of Michael Abram, 34, who attacked the musician and his wife, Olivia, in their 120-room gothic-style mansion that sits on 30 acres outside London. Harrison, a devoted spiritualist, tried to distract Abram during the attack and said that he chanted "Hare Krishna" as his assailant lunged toward him. "I vividly remember a deliberate thrust of a knife and I could feel the blood entering my mouth and hear my breath exhaling from the wound," said Harrison. Abram, who last year confessed to the attack, formally entered a plea of not guilty, with his lawyers telling the court that their client was not in his right mind at the time. The prosecution conceded that Abram was probably insane, and it is expected that he will ultimately be sentenced to a psychiatric hospital.