‘We shouldn’t wait for death to knock on our door for us to support and make movements against knife crime.’

Two bereaved mums have today written for the Havering Daily.

Peguy Kato lost her seventeen year old son Champion, stabbed eleven times and died on the streets of Forest Gate.

Sue Hedges lost her son Ricky Hayden in 2016 after being hacked to death with a machete.

Peguy writes:

You don’t have to be a parent to feel bad for a young child losing his life before his prime, and IF you are a parent although you have your opinion about children making the wrong decision regarding involving themselves in a gang and so forth, they still do not deserve having their life snatched away from them, it’s foul and it’s wrong!

A child can go down the wrong path, but they do not deserve to be killed because of that. We were children once upon a time before we became the adults that we are.

Regarding Baptista the 15 year old boy who lost his life recently in relation to knife crime, he was going to school, are we really going to say he’s a gang member also to make ourselves feel better? Because he wasn’t, he was going to school and he was somebody’s baby.

And all it takes is a parent, a carer to understand how it feels to love someone for them to be taken away from you. And as parents although your child isn’t involved in gangs (we never know)… but this is an awareness of how we are trying to raise for our children, grandchildren, so forth, it’s support for everyone, as they say it takes a village to raise a child, we are the village and any child is EVERYONE’S child!

We shouldn’t wait for death to knock on our door for us to support and make movements!

Sue Hedges who lost her son Ricky Hayden writes:

I was very upset with the turnout on Saturday from Havering residents, even though it was raining. BBC London gave it a few minutes airtime which is equally disappointing but we as mums have to carry on and tell our stories.

Unfortunately today’s society I don’t think will ever change as the Government are not interested in changing the whole system from educating to policing to the justice system/jury to sentencing. So the youths have the freedom of the streets.

Unfortunately their will be many families to come who will suffer like mine and others who have already lost their loved ones to knife crime.