A grieving mum vowed to fight knife crime the moment her son lay stricken of stab wounds suffered at the hands of youths.
Chris Cave, 17, would succumb to the four wounds suffered in a senseless murder when h had been trying to protect a friend. Theresa found the teenager slumped on a stairwell as paramedics tried to save his life.
Chris died by the time he reached A&E, where Theresa said a heartbreaking goodbye to her child. She said: “I promised ‘I will make some good come out of this’. Those were the last words I whispered to him.”
And now, nearly 23 years on, Theresa continues with her crusade to stop knife crime. She spoke about her journey this week in the wake of the sentencing of Hassan Sentamu, who murdered schoolgirl Elianne Andam in a shocking stabbing at a bus stop in Croydon, south London.
In a furious letter after Chris’s death, Theresa had told politicians Britain was on the brink of a pandemic of knife crime. Now, speaking in the wake of Elianne’s murder, Theresa said: “I told them 20 years ago, ‘You’re not listening’. And look at it now.”
Jimmy Mizen’s killer Jake Fahri recalled to prison amid drill rap video probe
Chris Cave was murdered in Redcar in June 2003
(
Image:
Tom Buist)
Theresa is pictured at her son’s funeral
(
Image:
Tom Buist)
Knife crime has soared across England and Wales; up nearly three quarters in the past decade, with the Northeast of England one of the worst affected areas. It is where Chris was killed in 2003 – Redcar in North Yorkshire specifically – but Theresa says she now reads about stabbings happening all over the UK.
The mum has lobbied politicians to impose heavier penalties. The maximum custodial sentence for knife possession is four years. She continued: “You’ve got Starmer throwing people in jail for rioting, for waving flags, for shouting at police. If he did the same with those caught with knives it wouldn’t be long before they stop carrying, because they’d know that there’s a deterrent, there’s going to be a consequence.”
Chris, who was about to become a dad, was stabbed repeatedly with a 12-inch blade as he helped a friend protect his home from a gang of youths. These included Sean Matson, who was so high on drink and drugs during the attack that he could not remember it. He was convicted of murder and is in prison.
Young people still face challenges across the country now but statistics show poverty has hit Redcar, in particular, hard in recent years. According to 2021 census data, 22 per cent of adults in Redcar and Cleveland have no formal qualifications compared with the UK average of 18 per cent. In the Northeast of England, one in seven children is growing up without a family member in a job.