Christopher's Story

Chris used to say about his daughter, “From the moment I saw her, I fell in love with her.”

She had been after these Barbie dolls. After he was murdered, we cleaned out his flat and he had 3 Barbie dolls wrapped up in Christmas paper, ready to bring down to her. He was a good father.

The last time I saw him was the weekend before -his flatmate’s girlfriend had given birth and he said, “Mum, I'm going to see the baby Saturday and then I'm going to come later.”

So we were expecting him Saturday afternoon. But he never came. He was just having a pint with his mate. Who would think? You're eight minutes in a pub and you’re stabbed in the back and you never return.

We were in bed when the police knocked. They told us Christopher had been murdered. The first person we called was Christopher. The phone rang and rang and every second felt like a minute.

You think pick up, pick up. You think it’s 4am, maybe he's asleep. I must have called 9 or 10 times -could have been more. No answer, put the phone down, ring again. Your brain's fighting reality. Come on Chris. If he picks up, it’s all a mistake. This will all be a dream. Just pick up. One part of you is saying, “Oh my God, he's been stabbed and murdered”, and the other parts going, “No, it can’t be right.” You can't grasp that the police don't come around for nothing.

You finally put the phone down. You think “He's going to call me back.” Then you slowly come to the reality that this is true. This is reality. We never went back to bed. We carried on as normal because we had Chris’s daughter to stay. I had to tell her that Daddy wasn't coming home. When I told his daughter, her screams were horrendous. They haunt me to this day. We tried Chris again later that morning. I was in denial until I saw him in the morgue.

Believe me, it's different looking at a dead son than a live one. You can't deny it anymore. I remember touching the window. You want to hold him, but we weren't allowed to touch him.

It's like being sick with emotion. People say, “I know how you feel.” They don't know. You cannot imagine what it's like unless you go through it. That night, Chris was having a pint when he went out to take a phone call. As he came back you could see figures behind him on CCTV, but he had no interaction with them. The second one put the knife in. As Chris turned, the third person was shocked because they knew each other. They knew they got the wrong person, but not one of them rang for an ambulance.

A girl tried to tend to him, but she didn’t know he’d been stabbed and he’s in too much pain to tell them. It was a while before help came, and he lost consciousness. It was over two months before Christopher was released from the morgue. We could finally put him to rest, no one could touch him then. It took months before his daughter realised that her Daddy’s never going to call again. Every time the phone rang she would dive for it, “Daddy is that you?” That went on for months.

I had to say "Babe, it’s never going to be Dad.” We need to put protecting our children above protecting people who use knives. People may think that keeping quiet keeps you out of their focus, but it empowers them.

No one is safe if we keep quiet.