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MAN: That day never leaves you.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
You think about it every second of every day.
But we'll be out and, "Oh, Olly would love that,"
or, "Olly would do that,"
or, you know, that kind of stuff is always in your head.
Olly was 13...
..and the two boys that murdered Olly, they were 13 and 14.
I don't understand what makes a child think that murder's OK.
REPORTER:One of them sent a message after the stabbing saying,
"It is what it is."
But how did they get the knife, and what led them to use it?
REPORTER:The number of young people being sentenced for murder
has soared over the last decade.
WOMAN:We want to know whether the 12-year-old boys
who committed murder with a machete, whether they should be named.
MAN: I cry. I cry every day and at night.
You know, I just take one day at a time.
MAN:You, get down on the ground, down on the ground right now!
CALL HANDLER: 'Is there any serious bleeding?'
CALLER:'Yes, very serious.'
Social media is featuring far too frequently
in incidents of murder and serious violence in this country.
MAN:We really can't underestimate
how social media's impacted our young people.
It's a wake-up call.
MAN:This is as serious as it gets, yeah? OK?
MAN:Had anybody threatened you? No comment.
I shouldn't be standing here talking about children carrying knives
and using them against other children.
MAN:If children this young can commit murder,
where does this leave us as society?
Armed police!
Show me your hands now!
MAN: 'Two 12-year-old boys appeared in court today charged with murder.
'Yes, you heard right, 12 years old.'
A case that's really caught the public attention recently
is the killing of Shawn Seesahai.
So, he was 19 years old, but shockingly, he was killed.
He was stabbed by two 12-year-olds in Wolverhampton,
and these two individuals are the youngest convicted killers in the UK
since the killing of James Bulger
when the perpetrators were ten years old.
REPORTER: 'On the night he was killed,
'Shawn and a friend bought soft drinks at a petrol station
'before heading to a park.
'In CCTV, you can just about see them approaching a bench
'where they had a disagreement with the two 12-year-olds.'
REPORTER:'One of the boys pulled out a 16-inch machete
'and stabbed Shawn, the other punched and stamped on his head.'
DR DAS:It has to be said that social media played a big part
in this particular incident
because both of the perpetrators were showing off to each other
about possessing knives and wanting to use them,
so it felt like they were literally just waiting for an opportunity
to attack anybody, some random stranger.
But it's the intention to go close to that person and take their life.
Cos remember, especially when it comes to knife crime,
there's a proximity.
You gotta get in that personal space.
DR DAS:Another chilling aspect to this case
was that the perpetrators were messaging each other
after the event, and one of them apparently wrote "IDRC",
which stands for "I don't really care".
So that just really shows just the callousness
and the lack of empathy that they had.
I think when we have these horrendous, shocking cases,
it kind of alarms us as a society
and we start asking ourselves questions.
If children this young could do something that heinous,
then where does that leave us as society?
OVER PHONE:'They're running about with machetes.
'What are their parents doing?'
'If somebody had killed my child, I'd want 'em named and shamed.'
'They're feral, these kids are feral.'
Whatever statistics I hear, whether it's knife crime possessions,
whether it's murders, those convicted of murders,
any statistics I've heard over the last ten years,
they're all going more or less in the wrong direction.
The fact that you've got younger suspects and victims,
and it's not just confined to...
those crime hotspots, the deprived areas,
it's now coming into all sorts of well-to-do areas
where you would never see this.
It can happen anywhere, and it can happen to anyone.
MAN:We felt quite safe here.
Everybody gets on, everybody knows everybody by sight,
everybody says hello.
Everybody knew Olly cos he was out on his bike all the time,
up and down the street causing havoc.
So, you know, he was well-known by everybody.
By that token, we knew everybody else's children,
so, you know, you felt that your kids were quite safe in this area.
His last year of primary school, he was struggling.
He couldn't understand what he had to do.
He didn't have... He almost, like...
He felt like his brain wasn't working properly.
It was that morning, actually, we were chatting to him about that,
and he kind of accepted the fact that he had autism,
but it wasn't severe autism,
but he was on the spectrum, definitely.
And it made it difficult for him to learn.
He would do everything feet first
and not worry about the consequences,
but part of being on the spectrum, you don't understand danger,
so they don't have red flags.
It was January the third, that was a Sunday,
we were going back to work on the Monday
so we were preoccupied with going back to work.
It was COVID. Christmas wasn't the same, you know.
I had a chat with him cos work was stressful, and I said,
"Look, I know work's been stressful
"and Christmas wasn't that great this year, you know,
"so we'll make up for it during the summer."
So, we made plans, you know,
"Yeah, we'll do that, once the world gets back on its feet,
"we'll do all these things."
He helped me with some chores in the morning.
We had a few laughs, and we were messing around.
And, so, yeah, all that stuff was going on,
and then Olly had gone outside, I heard him leave.
Olly was going out to meet somebody that we knew.
And he went out with his sliders on. He didn't suspect anything.
And he went over there, out to the field.
He got to the field.
He saw a girl, he had a conversation with her,
and then the other two came running up the hill and jumped him.
KNOCKING
And there was a knock on the door.
And I just heard Amanda scream,
and, you know, "What do you mean, he's been stabbed?"
And then I just flew down the stairs,
and I just ran over the field.
I didn't have any shoes on.
And I just saw everybody stood around him,
and he was having CPR at that point.
It's like your head's in a washing machine,
y-you're in shock, you're in disbelief, you know,
there's the horror,
and I managed to push people out of the way and get hold of his hand.
But when I felt his hand,
because an hour earlier, his hands had been warm...
..his hand was stone cold, so I knew he was gone.
There's a fog around the whole day for us.
You know, one minute, he's here, the next minute, they're not.
The shock, you're just like a zombie.
You can't sleep. You don't sleep...
..and I was looking out my bedroom window,
the same window that I watched him leave,
three o'clock in the morning, all the police tents were up,
and the field was sealed off,
and there were police on every exit and entrance.
REPORTER:'Those that knew him
'have been laying flowers at the scene
'as police have continued to scour the fields
'where the schoolboy was found,
'forensic experts documenting every potential clue.'
There were a lot of people out there
that couldn't understand why this had happened to Olly either.
But there's a whole chain of events building up to this moment.
Social media was massive in this.
BOY ON RECORDING:'You've got poison in your heart, fam.
'Olly, you're gonna die tomorrow.'
REPORTER: 'In the last image of his life,
'13-year-old Olly Stephens
'strolls to a park in Reading to meet a girl on a Sunday afternoon.
'Thirteen minutes later, he'd be dead.'
All Olly had done is, somebody he knew of had been patterned.
So, what they do is abuse you, video it, humiliate you
and then threaten to post it unless you do as they tell you.
And that's known as patterning.
So, Olly told the older brother of the boy,
the younger boy that was patterned, that this was going on.
And the two boys then felt aggrieved that he'd snitched on them.
He was just looking out for somebody else.
He'd done nothing majorly wrong.
He just passed a video on that was out there already.
But they saw that as a slight, and then they decided to punish him.
And that's when the conversations with the girl kicked off,
cos she wanted her revenge on him as well for...
All he'd done, he said, "Oh, I don't wanna see you any more."
So, between the three of them, this was a plot, definitely,
you could see it developing over the two weeks.
There were 11 platforms used on the plot against Olly.
So, there was a lot of escalation within those conversations.
They're just encouraging each other all the way.
So, they're goading each other to go further and further and further.
And it's horrendous.
'You got poison in your heart, fam.
'Olly, you're gonna die tomorrow.'
You know, there are audio clips out there of what she did
to make that meeting happen and who she contacted,
and one of them had told the other to carry the knife.
GIRL:'So, he's gonna go bang him and pattern him and shit.
'I'm so excited, you don't understand.'
And then they lured him out to the field.
So, he'd been set up.
And what happened was that Olly got involved in a fight
with the older boy, and Olly was winning,
so the other kid stabbed him in the back.
Olly must have turned around in shock, and stabbed him in the chest.
They punctured both lungs,
so he had literally a minute, a minute and a half.
There was no way he was gonna survive that.
It beggars belief, what they did to him.
And it was just evil, pure evil.
They left him dying, ran off laughing.
They've just lost all perspective. There was no value of life there.
They didn't care about Olly,
didn't care about the consequences of what they'd done
and just about protecting themselves.
Obviously, we were working very closely with the police,
and they spent the first 24 hours hammering social media for evidence.
The amount of evidence they collected was unbelievable.
I mean, the police did an amazing job piecing that all together,
so what it enabled the police to do was make arrests very quickly.
By the Monday night, they were all arrested.
REPORTER: 'The trial provided a glimpse
'into the online world which occupied the lives of these boys,
'where posing with knives and talking about killing
'was considered everyday chat.'
'We were in court every day for six weeks.
'It's very difficult to sit in a court
'when the person that's killed your son is six feet away.'
You know, listening to the evidence was... hard.
The way they were portrayed in court was,
"Oh, we haven't done anything wrong."
And, "It was all an accident," sort of thing.
At one point, they tried to say that Olly had fallen on the knife.
Their online presence was very violence-related.
You know, pictures of carrying knives, hooded up,
balaclava-ed up, referring to knives as "cheffers".
There was a lot of hatred there, a lot of violence.
You know, what makes a teenage boy go down that road?
Very early on in the girl's case,
the lawyers had pleaded guilty to manslaughter
because she didn't physically touch Olly.
Everything was done in the virtual world.
So, because she hadn't physically touched Olly,
she couldn't be accountable for his... for his death.
Their families' lives are ruined, their lives are ruined,
all because of one stupid act.
And there's no satisfaction in it, there's no celebration in it.
Cos you understand, you know, if we feel like this...
..how are their parents feeling?
But at the end of the day, they can still hug their children.
You know, we can't. So that's kind of the difference.
Sadly, this case is not the exception.
Social media is featuring far too frequently
in incidents of murder and serious violence in this country.
But the sharing of violent and weapon-related content,
particularly by children,
also needs to be a priority for these companies.
How social media, the role had played
in orchestrating Olly's murder, is quite frightening.
If you go and sit in the well of any court across this country,
and a murder trial where a knife has been involved,
almost certainly, social media will have played some part in that.
There is a cancer in our children's lives.
It starts with the use of a mobile phone,
with apps that are provided to entertain...
..yet are misused to spread slander, hatred, misinformation and bile,
and ends in the cold, cruel-blooded murder.
So, what we can't get our heads around is, you know, how...
SIGHS
teenagers are that desensitised.
And that comes back to what they see on their phones.
They're being shown knives and blades
and, you know, gang violence and all that kind of stuff,
and, erm, as a parent, you don't see it, you have no idea.
Obviously children, especially young boys,
fighting is not a new phenomenon,
but what does feel new to me is the contribution from social media.
So, it feels like these young individuals feel provoked
and they have to respond in some way to keep up that level of bravado.
They can have arguments
which can escalate quite quickly into actual murder.
Fred is my friend, my best, best friend, and my son.
I tried to make my son go on the right track.
Fred was gonna be a businessman.
So that's why he do well in school - he was gonna be a businessman.
I get a phone call say Fred get stabbed.
And it was giving me a panic attack. I did panic.
WHIRRING
So, I see the helicopter, and I was saying to God, I say, "God, please."
This serious for a helicopter to reach there at that time.
Then I get a phone call
when I was, like, going on my way that say he pass away.
He didn't make it.
I'd say it's pretty rare to get homicides in Northamptonshire.
So when I received a call that we'd had a murder in Northampton...
..and it was of a 16-year-old schoolboy,
I knew then that this was gonna have
a huge impact on the local community.
The first thing that I always want to do is go down to the scene
to get an understanding of what's happened, where it's happened.
So, the murder itself took place at the junction
of the Cock Hotel in Kingsthorpe in Northampton.
So, it's a busy junction with a lot of cars passing through it.
It was quite evident early on,
the complexities that we were gonna have around the scene.
The first things we'll do is try to gather as much evidence as we can,
as quickly as we can.
So, CCTV, those initial witness statements are gonna be key.
We can see from the CCTV
where Fred is walking home with a couple of his friends
before he sees on the opposite side of the road the offending parties.
It's at that point that he then crosses the road
to confront those others involved.
And I think Fred is expecting there to be a fight at that point.
But obviously completely unaware
that the other boys are carrying knives.
So, after Fred was stabbed,
a couple of members of the public passing in their vehicle
had seen what had occurred.
Seeing that Fred's being tended to
by a lot of members of the public already,
they decide to follow the two offenders.
And they followed them along a road,
up towards an alleyway, where they see them enter,
and they're on the phone to the police
the whole time this is taking place as well.
And they were able to direct the police
into an address that the two boys then went into.
POLICE OFFICER:You, both of you, show me your hands.
You, show me your hands!
Down on the ground! Down on the ground!
We know they're armed with knives,
we don't know what other weapons they've got,
we don't know who they are and how they're gonna behave.
You!
Right, get him, get him, get him.
You! Down on the ground! Down on the ground! Do it now!
OFFICER SHOUTS
Stay there. What?
You what?
So, at that point, the officers have to make a decision
to enter the premises, not knowing what they're going to find.
They don't know whether this is adults involved,
if these are violent, hardened criminals or what.
Right, you, onto your side.
Sit up.
So, they've gone into that address completely open-minded,
but prepared for every eventuality.
They clear the property meticulously room by room,
at which point, they arrive at an upstairs attic
that had been semi-converted into a bit of a sleep-in.
You've just entered this property,
you know that a boy has been murdered out on the street,
and then you find potential suspect hiding behind the chest of drawers.
Armed police!
Show me your hands now! Show me your BLEEPhands.
Do not move!
And you see that it's this 14-year-old child.
Do not move!
On the floor now, on the floor now! Down on your front!
OK, mate, you're under arrest on suspicion of murder.
You do not have to say anything,
but it may harm your defence if you do not mention
when questioned something which you later rely on in court.
Armed police!
Show me your hands now!
WOMAN: Northamptonshire Police have launched a murder investigation
after, yesterday, a 16-year-old boy was tragically stabbed.
Sadly, despite the best efforts of members of the public,
the police, police staff and paramedics,
he died shortly afterwards.
So, unlike a lot of homicide investigations...
..because we followed the offenders from the scene
to the point of arrest in a very, very short amount of time...
..they've not had the opportunity to discard items.
Also, being children, not that experienced in criminality,
perhaps they hadn't thought this far ahead
around what they'd do with their clothes and their weapons.
So, in the garden, once we've started to clear that out,
we've uncovered clothing, and we've uncovered knives as well.
So, this weapon here was discarded into some bushes
at the address where they were arrested from.
Very nasty, very lethal weapon that people can just go and buy online.
It's a hunting knife,
so it's got some tools on here for cutting line and stuff.
It's got a serrated edge, it's used for butchering meat.
So, what we know is that two weapons were taken to the scene.
This one, that was held by the 16-year-old in his waistband,
and then the other one that we've got here
that a 14-year-old had, which was the fatal weapon.
As you can see, it's a great big knife, absolutely massive.
And you gotta think this was being carried by a 14-year-old.
So, this knife has got a blade
that's around 25 centimetres in length.
And we know from the pathology results
that it went into Fred's chest around 15, 16 centimetres
before it literally cut his heart in two.
So, it's extremely tragic.
Until the investigation commenced, we were completely unaware
of what was going on in the background.
And it wasn't until we started digging into the mobile phones
and all of the evidence and the messages
that we understand the full picture
of how this has escalated over a number of days.
These boys weren't really known to each other before.
They'd crossed paths once at a party,
but they weren't friends or associates.
It was only because of those messages
that involved their wider circle of friends
that it's just escalated so senselessly,
so needlessly, resulting in Fred's death.
So, this has all occurred after a bit of a dispute over a girl...
..and losing face, we would say.
The 14-year-old boy has lost face over what's happened.
That's then transpired into violence on the Monday
against one of Fred's friends.
Then on the Tuesday, Fred and another boy
sought to get some revenge for that earlier assault.
It was a bit of a tit for tat.
Again, there was another fight, pretty low level,
although the violence had escalated slightly when Fred used his belt.
And that was a real catalyst, then,
for what occurs then on the Wednesday.
The 14-year-old and 16-year-old were in contact with each other...
..trying to get others involved, to then hunt down Fred.
They're talking around bringing tools, coming "ballied up".
And there was a clear inference then to bring tools in the plural,
not just one, but tools for both of them,
that they wanted to go armed,
they wanted to have that show of force.
We then see that plan start coming into play
with the picking up of a Voi scooter from Northampton town centre.
We know that that's been hired
by the 14-year-old in an account belonging to his mother.
So we see the journey that he takes from near to his home address
into the town centre to then go and pick up the 16-year-old.
The knives are brought out by the 14-year-old,
one's handed to the 16-year-old, so they've got one each now.
From there, they then travel up towards Kingsthorpe College,
looking for Fred.
But they're late, Fred has already left school for the day.
It's around quarter past, twenty past three.
So, they then start to follow the route
that Fred would've taken to walk home,
at which point, we then pick them up on CCTV.
As Fred is walking down towards the Cock Hotel junction,
we can see them travelling down on their scooter.
So, Fred's with one of his other friends
who provided a key witness statement to the police around what happened.
After they crossed the road and approached the other boys,
there's a confrontation between Fred and the 16-year-old,
one of the suspects.
He goes to the ground
and then the 14-year-old accomplice who's with him
steps over and approaches Fred.
The 14-year-old pulls out his knife, and it's a really big knife,
and starts approaching Fred.
Fred's seen a knife, backs up, but he's walking backwards
and he doesn't know there's a tree behind him
and unfortunately gets himself cornered against a tree.
At which point, the 14-year-old then lunges
once to the side of his chest...
..going straight in through his heart.
So it was only one stab wound, and that's all it takes.
You know, this was a whopping great big knife,
and unfortunately, it cost Fred his life.
It was a catastrophic injury.
Fred suffered massive blood loss.
Within a matter of seconds, he was unconscious and collapsed.
The coroner said the knife touched his heart.
That's why - punctured his heart.
But this guy who killed my son doesn't even know my son.
Doesn't know my son.
He wanna be hard. Social media.
I think they're pressuring the child to be what them is not.
He talk on the social media saying he gonna kill Fred.
And then they do it.
And that dangerous weapon, he buy it online.
He bought that knife online.
He kill an innocent man. Stupid.
I think times have really changed
from perhaps when I used to be at school...
..and there used to be disputes
and boys would have a fight under the underpass after school,
and you'd go your separate ways, and that'd be the end of it.
Nowadays, it seems to be so many young people are carrying knives,
you just don't know what you are walking into
when these fights occur.
So, with the mobile phones that we recovered,
we identified a number of images
that were of key importance later on in the trial.
And these showed that the 16-year-old
is posing in his kitchen, holding a great big machete.
He's got a face covering on, and he's brandishing this knife
clearly for social media and his sort of... his reputation.
We've got other images as well that show the boys together again,
holding other knives, different knives,
out in the street as well,
trying to look fierce and trying to look menacing.
All part of that image and that reputation
they're trying to build as, you know,
people not to be messed with, people to be feared.
Really mixed emotions.
One, we're pleased, obviously,
that the offender who stuck the knife into Fred
and ultimately took his life, he's been found guilty.
That was always the priority in this case.
The conversation that I had with Fred's father, Rohan,
was around, you know, he's the one
that we really need to get convicted of this.
He's the one ultimately responsible.
However, the 16-year-old, he played a significant role in this.
He's the one sending messages the night before,
getting the 14-year-old to come, bring the tools, come ballied up.
We see him on CCTV going with a flying kick
before the stabbing takes place as well.
So he was heavily involved in it, but for whatever reason,
the jury returned their "not guilty" verdicts.
Very hurt...
..to know that my son life just... just taken away.
Every day, I cry, cry, cry, cry, if I tell you the truth.
I cry. I cry every day and night.
SNIFFS
I'm very hurt.
Very, very hurt.
Well, I just take one day at a time.
I think, in a lot of ways...
..youth culture has been hijacked by this.
I'm not trying to stereotype, "All youth culture's the same,"
but there's certain norms and values that have been adopted,
regardless of your background,
because social media has been the accelerant.
What social media has done has created a style icon,
a youth culture, almost, around knife carrying
in that it glamorises it and normalises it.
SHOUTING
TEENAGER:Lacking. He's lacking.
Lacking. He's lacking. Lacking.
So, bravado is part of it, but it's also the fear
that you will need a knife at some point to protect yourself.
And in actual fact, the bravado part of it,
sometimes, for some kids is actually saying,
"Look, I've got a knife, don't mess with me."
If you've got somebody that's carrying a knife cos they're scared,
with a minor confrontation,
being fuelled by filming, bravado, young people,
that's when we're seeing knives being pulled out.
And the most horrendous situations are coming
from such a small altercation.
So, I suppose an age-old question is
whether it's always possible to find an explanation
of why a child might carry out a heinous act like murder.
So is it because they've been exposed to violence
or they have parents or caregivers that don't instil a moral compass?
And then another factor is that
I think it's very possible for child perpetrators,
for child killers, to actually enjoy
the process of hurting somebody and taking somebody's life.
A case that really stands out to me is the murder of Brianna Ghey,
who was a 16-year-old transgender schoolgirl.
And she was murdered by two individuals,
Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe,
who were both 15 years old.
REPORTER:It's the moment Brianna Ghey met her killers.
CCTV shows Scarlett Jenkinson, labelled X here,
chatting to Eddie Ratcliffe, labelled Y.
Brianna has just got off a bus and would be murdered not long after.
One thing that really stands out to me about the Brianna Ghey case
is the fact that it appears to be very pre-planned.
So it was Scarlett's plan in the beginning,
but she encouraged Eddie to join in with her,
and they exchanged thousands of messages.
She befriended Brianna in advance and invited her out to the park.
And it felt like they took a delight in the planning.
REPORTER: Jurors at their trial late last year
were shown this handwritten so-called murder plan,
on which Scarlett Jenkinson mapped out the barbarism they would commit.
OFFICER:Scarlett, you are under arrest on suspicion of murder.
How come I'm a suspect? How come you're a suspect?
Is it cos I'm the last person that's seen her, or is it...?
I don't know.
All the information I've received is you are a suspect, OK?
These are two kids who had a hit list
of kids that they could potentially kill.
And they were really immersed in
how fantastic and exciting it would be
to end the life of somebody.
So that is a shocking way of thinking.
So, when we look back in time,
children that go on to commit violence like murder
is nothing new - that's been happening for decades.
I would say that in the vast majority of cases,
there's usually something to do with their psychiatric make-up.
But I think it's also fair to say that there are exceptions.
REPORTER:Two 14-year-old boys lured a man to his death,
killing him simply for fun.
The victim's family said the teenagers had been brutal.
He boasted about the killing to school friends.
Obviously, you don't go to work thinking,
"I wonder how many 14-year-old murderers
"I'm gonna deal with today."
And even now, here we are 25 years ago,
and to talk about it, and it makes me think,
"Well, why? Why on earth did this happen?"
REPORTER:In this park in Bedford, two 14-year-old boys
lured a man to his death, killing him simply for fun.
Their victim was Mohammed Aslam, who had been sitting on a park bench.
April 1999.
It was close to his birthday, he'd been let down by his friends.
He'd went out and got hopelessly drunk
and sat on a park bench down by The Slipe...
..and then his body was found.
It was evident immediately he'd been savagely beaten.
There was an imprint of this man's head in the ground,
and that shows the level of ferocity that the offenders had used on him.
There was bits of wood around with blood
and pallets that would have been used in the attack,
and it became clear after a couple of days
that one of the offenders
had began boasting that they had killed a man.
There were two people involved. Both were 14.
Terence Lambert and Sergio Pantano.
As the investigation unravels,
you begin to question, what's the motivation behind this?
Both went to good schools, both came from good families.
So there's nothing on the face of it in their background to indicate
that they had a challenge around why they would want to do this.
It's evident if you put a pallet on somebody,
jump up and down on that,
you're gonna cause very, very serious harm to somebody,
but they found it quite amusing and ran away laughing so hard
that they could hardly run away from the scene,
which... is unbelievable.
Truly unbelievable.
REPORTER:Judge Daniel Rodwell described the evidence
as a "chilling catalogue of gratuitous violence
"which gives every indication
"that it was carried out for the fun of it".
I think trying to understand why these things happen is...
Even now, I find it difficult to do, and I would challenge anybody
to come up with a rationale why that should be.
And I can't imagine what the motivation for that was
other than gratuitous violence, evil.
I've been asked about the term "evil".
I can understand why people use it
when they're trying to convey across the hatred of a heinous act
by an individual in something like a news report.
So I understand it, but it's not part of my world.
But I do have my equivalence within forensic psychiatry.
So my equivalent would be an individual
who's completely lacking in empathy and is completely callous
and they don't care about the rights or the wellbeing of others.
Plus, they don't have that moral barrier
to stop them going out and committing violence.
When I hear of a child who has committed murder,
it's more likely that they're gonna get involved
in an altercation at a party
or somewhere where kids congregate
and that somebody is going to have thought
that it was a bright idea to take a knife out with them that day.
RINGING TONE
CALLER: 'Hello, erm... Address? 999.'
SHOUTING
CALL HANDLER: 'This is the ambulance service.'
SHOUTING
'No, no, no, they're not breathing.' CALLER:'Please hurry up.'
'They've just been stabbed. It's a house party. Please.'
I'd had loads of missed calls.
I think it was, like, 37 missed calls from Mikey...
..and other numbers that I didn't know.
My heart was in my throat,
like, to have that many calls, what's happened?
CALL HANDLER:'Listen to me. Listen to what I'm saying, OK?
'Is the attacker still nearby?'
CALLER: 'I don't know. I don't know.
'I don't know. I don't know.' 'OK, darling.
'Is there any serious bleeding?' 'Yes. Very serious.'
Mikey's friend, he answered his phone.
And he said, "Mikey's been stabbed."
I-I didn't even know what to think. Like, I thought, "No, he hasn't."
I was saying, "No, he hasn't. No, he hasn't."
He was like, "Yeah, he has." And I said, "Is he all right?
"Get an ambulance. Why are you ringing me? Get an ambulance."
And then when we pulled up...
..there was a white tent up.
VOICE BREAKING:So I knew.
They were in their forensic suits.
The police just come over, the policeman, and he just said...
Erm...
"A young man's been stabbed here and killed tonight,
"and we believe it's your son, Mikey."
It does still get to you, even after a long time in the police.
When you hear the details, the emotional accounts from witnesses,
it does... it does get to you.
I went out to meet Hayley. And it is hard.
You walk into someone's home, erm, who've just lost a loved one...
All I can remember saying to Mark was,
"Please get them. Please go and get them."
It's horrific to think that people take knives to teenage parties.
But knives were drawn and then something happened.
NEWSREADER:Mikey Roynon was fatally stabbed in the neck
with a large zombie knife during a house party in Bath.
I can't believe kids carry those around with them.
Like, where do they get them from? It's shocking.
He was my only son. Didn't need another one.
I always say he was my friend, as well.
I know he's my son, but he's my friend.
Like, we told each other everything.
Because it was a murder,
they can't release the body to the funeral directors for quite a while.
That broke my heart. Erm...
He obviously had to be identified.
Erm, I couldn't do it.
The last time I seen him, he walked out the door,
and I said to him, "Oh, you look handsome."
And he went, "All right, Mum, love you."
And, like, give me a cheeky grin. And I said, "Love you."
Erm, I don't... I don't wanna remember anything else.
So, in the first few days of a murder inquiry,
it's really important that you take time to evaluate
what you've got, to understand where you're heading.
There were in excess of 70 teenagers there.
They witnessed probably
the most horrific thing they'll ever see in their lives.
So we had a large number of teenagers
who were extremely traumatised.
The majority didn't see the actual incident,
but importantly, we had an eyewitness
who wasn't involved in the incident
but knew who had committed the murder.
And he did the right thing. He explained what had happened.
So, it was a 16th birthday party
arranged by a girl in an area of Bath,
and it was kind of an open invite to her friends and their friends.
Mikey, we think that he got a Snapchat
inviting him to this party,
and when I've spoken to his friends, they just said they were a bit like,
"Oh, why not? Let's go. It might be all right.
"It gives us something to do."
So they caught the bus to Bath and went to the party.
But also at the house were a group of teenagers
from the Wiltshire area.
They had been invited through a friend of a friend,
and they'd come over on the bus.
And it was just a normal house party.
From the party itself, we recovered a picture
from one of the Snapchat accounts.
It showed a group of youth, sat round on the decking
at the back of the party where the murder was going to happen.
And everyone seemed to be having a good time.
And then something happened.
We still don't know what the trigger was.
Suddenly, there was a standoff between two groups.
We think it was a group of boys from Bristol
and these boys from Wiltshire, and knives were drawn.
Mikey suffered one wound.
We believe he was attacked from behind,
so he may not have seen the attacker.
Shane Cunningham, he was 16.
And it was one very powerful blow into the back of his neck.
He was supported by Cartel Bushnell, who was 15.
People started to flee from the house,
and Mikey himself moved through the house, where he collapsed outside.
You can imagine, you've got screaming teenagers down the phone.
CALLER: 'Hello, erm... Address? 999.'
SHOUTING
'There's a lot of people here. Please come, please come.'
You've got very upset neighbours.
Some of the neighbours were administering first aid at the time.
CALL HANDLER:'I'm going to tell you how to do chest compressions.
'I need you to pump the chest hard and fast at least twice per second.'
'We're doing chest compressions.'
The initial minutes are utter chaos.
'I'm gonna count with you, keep doing those compressions.
'Can they hear me?' 'OK.'
'OK, one, two, three, four.'
So, the investigation, it was pointing towards
these two individuals being involved in the murder.
And we then began to work on securing enough evidence.
So, when the actual incident had happened and they fled,
we caught them on CCTV,
very briefly, discussing the incident.
Shane said to Cartel about the knife getting stuck in Mikey's neck.
And then we found a zombie knife forced down a drain,
and that was the murder weapon.
I would describe them as combat knives.
They're also described as zombie knives.
They're very long weapons.
They have a very long cutting edge, and then the back is very serrated.
My view - they're designed for one thing,
and that's to kill.
We found Shane's DNA on the handle and Mikey's forensics on the blade.
It wasn't until a few months later
that we realised that, actually, we had another person.
Leo Knight, who was also 15.
He'd given an account as a witness that just didn't add up.
There were a few question marks around his clothing
being disposed of at the scene.
And then, as the investigation progressed,
we had some forensics back about a knife that we then linked to him.
His DNA on the handle.
And then we found Mikey's blood on the blade,
but importantly, that was airborne blood.
So that means that that knife was being held aloft
when Mikey's blood was airborne.
Our case was that, erm...
Leo had that knife out at the point that Mikey was murdered.
So they were the main key bits of forensic evidence.
CCTV-wise, we had some good footage from the bus journey,
which we say showed Leo with a knife in his waistband,
hidden under clothing.
We also recovered footage from McDonald's,
where we say that Shane was fiddling with a knife
in the waistband of his clothing.
Only Shane Cunningham had actually stabbed Mikey,
but the other two were equally responsible
because of their roles in producing knives
and supporting the main defendant.
OFFICER:Was it you that stabbed him in the neck?
Or was it somebody else that stabbed him in the neck?
They chose not to speak to us, which is their right.
OFFICER: Is there some reason why you felt
that you had to have a knife with you that day? No comment.
Had anybody threatened you? No comment.
So to this day, we still don't know exactly what their mindset was.
OFFICER: Tell me about knives at the party.
Did you see people with knives at the party?
They were three teenagers, 15, 16 years old.
Nothing remarkable about them.
There are probably hundreds like them everywhere,
in every town and city across the country.
If you were to look back at someone's past and say,
"Are they likely to go out and commit murder next week?"
Definitely not with these boys.
'It's the most horrendous feeling,
'knowing that you have to go and face them,
'look them in the eye.
'Like, they've taken your world, your life.
'Mikey's life.'
There's no words to describe how it feels to sit there and think,
"You've taken my only child from me...
"..and you... you're just sat smiling, playing, looking."
You know... no words.
To this day, we don't know why he was killed.
A minor flare-up at a party between kids.
It should have been, at worst case, a punch or a big ruck
and ended up with a few bruises.
But because these defendants chose to take knives with them,
he lost his life.
It's like it's part of their wardrobe, as it were.
Put your trainers on, put your tracksuit on
and just pick up your zombie knife, just in case.
It's a mindset that I can't understand.
Takes your breath away when you wake up and you think,
"This has actually happened."
You think, "No, no, no."
I miss cooking for him. He loved his mum's cooking.
I miss doing his washing terribly.
VOICE BREAKING: Hanging his clothes out on the line.
I miss changing his bed.
Just doing things that you do for your kids as a mum.
He has his own washing basket in his bedroom...
and his clothes are still in there.
Cos I can't wash it for the last time.
I just can't do it, so...
they'll probably stay in there for the rest of my life
because I can't.
Knives are getting bigger.
It's like an arm's war.
A decade ago, I would've been talking to parents
about checking the knife drawers and particularly the small knives
that could be hidden in your belt.
Now we're talking to parents about checking those deliveries
that arrive on your door.
Because the knives that are being used are massive,
either zombie knives or machetes.
This all spirals in an arm's war.
If I think you are carrying a knife and I need to protect myself,
I will carry a bigger knife because that will protect me against you.
And it goes on, and it goes on, and it goes on, and it goes on.
Knives, easily accesible,
cheaper options. Social media has been the accelerant.
You know, certain things.. that you use to believe.
“My child could never get involved in this”
Really?! Check what’s on their phone.
Check what..who they’re associating with.. online.
Three years down the line, you don't ever forget that day.
This is the field where Olly was lured to... consequently murdered.
But we didn't want his friends
and people to remember this as a bad place.
The thing is, that field was always the safe place for the kids.
And because of what happened to Olly,
they were staying away from it.
So Olly wouldn't want that, and we didn't want it.
So... we came up with the idea of putting a bench there.
And then the tree came about
because we had an oak tree growing in the back garden
that had been there as long as Olly has.
So we planted that, and then the kids now decorate it at Christmas
and then they leave gifts and things and messages to Olly.
You know, we often just think, "Why us? Why Olly?"
He was only 13 for about six weeks.
His birthday was the 1st of November
and he was taken on the 3rd of January,
so he didn't have... he didn't have very long as a teenager.
But in his short period of time, he gave so much.
I think the saddest thing about losing a child is
the pain is never gonna go away... ever.
You learn to live in pain.
I lost my only son, Joshua, to knife crime in 2013.
He was stabbed once in the heart.
He wasn't a gang member, wasn't a drug dealer.
It was a minor altercation, and a young man carried a knife,
and the consequences were devastating
and are devastating almost 11 years later.
You know, every year, there's a birthday, an anniversary,
a Mother's Day, a Father's Day, a Christmas that come at you,
hit you like a speeding train.
I just want other parents to be kind to themselves
and realise that the pain they're in
and the difficulties they face are very, very normal.
Now I focus on, you know, how many young people
can I get to see the reality of their choices before it's too late?
And so, it's... that fuels me to keep going.
I think the main thing that I've seen over the last ten years
is the ages getting younger.
And the increase in murders over such trivial, trivial things -
a look, a comment.
I think we've seen a huge increase
in crimes like that that are happening.
And you're just thinking, "Children are dying
"over such trivial things in this country."
We must be doing more for our future generation.