Son’s horrifying prediction earlier than personal homicide as tearful mum given Starmer vow

Keir Starmer has told families of knife crime victims to hold him to account over his promises to drive down violence on Britain’s streets.

The Labour leader was joined by actor and campaigner Idris Elba at an event in Hammersmith, west London, where they heard the stories of families whose lives had been devastated by knives.

Pastor Lorraine Jones spoke about her son Dwayne, who was stabbed with a sword while trying to save another boy’s life in Brixton, south London, in 2014.

She said: “He told me, ‘Mum, the streets are so dangerous, I don’t think I’m going to make my 21st birthday. You know he didn’t make his 21st birthday, he didn’t. Absolute horror.”

Lorraine, 52, brought the room to silence as she described watching the CCTV of the attack on her son as he tried to shield another young boy. Dwayne was in hospital on life support for two days but sadly died two days later.

The mum-of-seven described her fight against knife crime as being “on a battlefield that I can’t retreat from” – and spoke about how young people are still being killed.

Pooja, the mum of Ronan Kanda, a 16-year-old boy who was killed with a ninja sword, expressed horror that nothing had been done to get these weapons off the streets before her son’s death in Wolverhampton in 2022.

Addressing Lorraine, she said: “Ten years ago your son was killed by a sword. And two years ago, it happened to my child. So what happened in that eight years? What did the Government do?

“If they did something after what happened to your child, my son would have had a chance of being with me today.”

Labour has promised to bring in Ronan’s Law in his memory, to crack down on online knife sales and widen the ban on types of lethal weapons. Mr Starmer has said ending the scourge of stabbings on Britain’s streets will be his “moral mission” if he wins the election.

It comes after police recorded nearly 50,000 knife offences in the year to December 2023 in England and Wales, a rise of 7% on the previous year. Crimes involving knives are 3% lower than the pre-pandemic total of 51,206 offences in the year to March 2020.

But it comes after a decade of rising violence, with knife offending up 81% since 2015. There were 244 killings in England and Wales in the year to March 2023, with 78 victims aged below 25. Ten were under 16.

Pooja told the Labour leader: “This is for the future children. Protect them, they need that. They are screaming, screaming for help.”

A visibly-moved Mr Starmer said their stories were the “seeds of change” but said action was needed rather than empty promises.

He told them: “I will make myself available after the election. Say to me, ‘You had a round table with us. Now three months, six months down the line, where’s the plan? Where’s the update? Are we making progress? Have you done what you said you’d do?'”

Idris, who launched his “Don’t Stop Your Future” campaign with the Mirror this year, told the group: “They’re smart, some of these kids right now. I’ve had conversations which are difficult. Like ‘Idris, you’re telling people to put away our knives but what am I gonna hold?’

“I feel like I don’t know what to say to them. They literally are holding these [knives] out of fear.

“But they have solutions. Some of them say, if there was tougher sentencing, they’re like, ‘I’m not sure if I want to go to jail for that’. “They are saying that.”

On sending knives in the post, he said: “Some are saying that there’s too many loopholes – even if you banned it at the Post Office, I could just go and get someone else’s ID and do it.

“They know all the loopholes, so let’s just use your creative minds and go, OK, let’s find ways to help. You know, use your creative minds to help us, help this whole-society issue.”

Speaking afterwards, the star said ending knife crime was not political and praised Mr Starmer for listening to victims. In a video posted to Instagram, he said: “We had a very wide conversation about what we need to do as a country to fight this. It was non-political, and I’m making that clear because this is a societal issue.

“But as someone that might be taking the hot seat, it was really important to hear what he had to say about his plans… Today he listened.”

Speaking to reporters after the event, Mr Starmer admitted the families’ testimonies were hard to hear but said it had only strengthened his resolve. He said: “Yes it is difficult, it should be difficult. Nobody should be comfortable listening to those stories. What it does within me is there’s an emotional charge that goes through which says we’re going to do something about this, we’re going to fix this.

“We can’t fix it in the true sense they would like, which is it should never have happened in the first place. But we can do what they’re asking which is to work with them to make sure we change things in the future.”

Lorraine told the Mirror afterwards that she felt like she was being heard at last. Close to tears, she said: “I’ve never sat around the table and had this close communication like what happened today with Keir and Idris, never. It’s be so hard. I have got six other children, five grandchildren. I can’t stop. But we need help.

“I’ve seen year after year, community centres are shutting, projects are shutting. It’s a miracle I keep going but I could just as well give up.”

She added: “This invitation from Keir. You could feel he means what he says, he’s a human being. Everyone can see that. I feel like we are being listened to and he’s going to bring some action.”

Pooja told the Mirror afterwards that she believed lives could have been saved if politicians had acted on their promises after Ronan’s death. “They did nothing to ban these types of weapons and that allowed them to keep buying them and my son was murdered by one of them.

“These are the steps that the Government failed to take and my son lost his life.”