I lost my son to knife crime and want more from Keir Starmer than words

It was December 2021 when our lives changed forever.

Typically this month was always a happy one for our family. My son Oliver would celebrate his birthday then before we knew it Christmas was here.

For 31 days our home would be full of endless love and laughter. But not that year.

On the evening of December 10, Oliver, then 19, mentioned he was going to meet up with friends.

Normally, I would have been straight onto him with all the questions about who would be there and where he was going. It didn’t matter that he was now living in a flat with his partner and their newborn baby – as a mum I always wanted to know he was safe.

But on this particular evening I said nothing, I didn’t want to nag him. Now I wonder, if I had, would things be different.

In the early hours of the next morning – which was actually the day before his 20th birthday – my phone rang. When I answered, his partner screamed three words down the phone that no mother should ever have to hear.

‘Oliver’s been shot!’ she shrieked.

Between sobs, she told me how Oliver had ended up at a party with friends and had been attacked, all the while I was racing around the house trying to work out how I could get to him as fast as possible.

I’d not long had major surgery so couldn’t drive and my husband, Rob, had Covid and was still in isolation. Eventually I called a friend who lived nearby and she drove me and my other son, Charlie, to the scene.

As we raced there, several police cars bombed past us with their lights flashing. 

I just knew they were headed to the same place as us.

Sure enough, as we turned into the cul-de-sac, I saw a sea of cars. Police were ordering people to either go back inside or clear the area so that they could cordon off the area but I refused to leave.

‘Please,’ I begged. ‘My son was shot.’

One officer then came over and asked me to explain what I knew. He then told me that they didn’t think Oliver had been shot but that he had been stabbed in the leg.

At that moment I felt myself relax. 

Not knowing how serious it was, I just assumed I’d be jumping in the back of the ambulance with him, that at most he was going to need stitches. I never dreamed it could be something catastrophic.

All I could see at the time – when I laid on the floor and peered under a car – was paramedics performing CPR and using a defibrillator.

That’s when I started to worry.

Officers wouldn’t let me go see him. They wouldn’t even let me stand near him. 

I later learned that the knife had severed his femoral artery and femoral vein, and he was losing blood fast.

‘Oliver, I’m here!’ I yelled over and over, willing him to be OK.

Eventually the same police officer I’d spoken to earlier came over to me again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘He’s gone.’

I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t know if I screamed or cried or collapsed. In all likelihood it’s probably all three but it felt like my world had ended. 

My darling boy had been murdered just one day before his 20th birthday. Then on December 12, 2021, around 200 people – including friends, family, and total strangers – gathered to release balloons at a local park in his memory. It was an incredibly emotional day.

Three years on, I want action from Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 

My husband and I have just one thing to say to him: we’re not shocked, we’re just disappointed.

Six months ago, he pledged to take action and ‘tackle knife crime by Christmas’, and that, if he hadn’t, he wanted families of victims to hold him to account.

Well Prime Minister, it’s been exactly six months since you were elected and now, I’m calling you out. Since coming into power, all I can see that you’ve done in the name of progress towards ending knife crime is host one summit in September.

It may have the support of Hollywood A-lister, Idris Elba, and he may see it as ‘a step in the right direction’, but I worry it’s more empty words.

Where is the tangible evidence that you’re actively trying to stop the problem? How many more men, women and children are going to have to die needlessly, senselessly like my son, Oliver before real action is taken?

On the day my son died, I was begging to see him, but as he was now officially ‘evidence’, I wasn’t allowed. 

The days and weeks that followed are a blur of grief.

Oliver’s birthday arrived and Christmas soon followed, with all the presents we’d got from him staying mostly wrapped – the only ones that were opened were a few parcels of new clothing, which we gave to the funeral home to dress him in.

At the same time, police were constantly giving us updates on the case. Around 15 people were arrested but only nine were formally charged.

We started 2022 by saying goodbye to our brave boy. And it was during Rob’s eulogy that Oliver’s daughter uttered her first words. Staring at his photo she said: ‘Dada’ as clear as day.

The rest of the year then became about fighting for justice. Of the nine that were charged, only four were convicted.

Only Chardon Carnagie, 19, was found guilty of murder after he stabbed Oliver. He was jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years. 

The others – Mykel Paddifoot, 18, and a then 17-year old girl who can’t be named due to legal reasons – were found guilty of manslaughter, and Travel Reid, 21, admitted to manslaughter.

It emerged that the girl had complained about a party attendee and arranged for Carnagie and his associates to come. Once there, he punched a man and slashed his leg and later Oliver was killed for trying to protect a friend.

The sentences don’t feel like enough. We’ve been left with a hole in our lives and in our hearts, but the justice system doesn’t seem to care. Case in point, in January 2024 Reid was even released without us knowing – how can that be right?

In the years since losing Oliver we have done all we can to ‘move on’, to find some semblance of normality, but it is incredibly hard when it always feels like someone is missing.

On what should have been Oliver’s 21st birthday in 2022, we attended another balloon release his friends had organised on social media at a local park. It both filled and broke our hearts to see how loved he was.

Mainly though, we’ve dedicated ourselves to raising as much awareness as we can. It’s why we’ve made it a priority to raise funds for the Daniel Baird Foundation – an anti-knife crime charity that invented bleed control kits, which are used to limit potentially fatal bleeding during stabbings – and to help distribute them across Staffordshire.

We’ve also helped try to raise funds and awareness for other charities, such as Charlie’s Promise.

It’s important to us that Oliver’s legacy is a good one, because all he ever wanted was to be happy.

All he dreamed of for the future was the simplest things: to be able to own his own house and give his daughter a swing set. To buy her a puppy and take his family on holidays. 

It’s so inexplicably cruel to know that he won’t see any of his dreams come true. No families should suffer like we have, and that’s why we want action from the Prime Minister. 

So, Mr Starmer, if you think me, Rob or anyone else who has been affected by knife crime is going away any time soon, you have another thing coming.

We’re tired of false promises and the photo opportunities. We want to see real action, now.

Stop just talking about it and make education around knife crime paramount, bring in tougher sentences for perpetrators and stick to them, and help us end knife crime for good. 

If you do that, maybe less parents will go through what Rob and I have. 

As told to Emma Rossiter

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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