My brother was murdered just like Tyson Fury’s cousin Rico Burton – I know how to get tough on spiralling knife crime

GRIEVING the loss of his cousin to the knife crime epidemic, Tyson Fury wrote: “You don’t how bad it is until it’s one your own.”

I know exactly what the boxer means. For my family also has an empty space at the heart of it because of knives.

On June 29, 2008, my little brother Ben went out in Islington, North London, to celebrate the end of his exams. He never came home.

Aged just 16, he was stabbed 11 times in an unprovoked attack. His life was gone before it had hardly started.

I will never forget the awful memories of being at the hospital where Ben had been taken and being told by the nurses that he wasn’t going to make it.

My distraught mum and dad rushed to his bedside, while the rest of us were left behind in a waiting room. We collapsed in grief.

NEVER-ENDING BLOODSHED

Then came the moment when we were taken to see Ben after he had died.

Despite the trauma he had been through, his beautiful face was totally unmarked. It was then that it became painfully real that he was never coming home.

So when I heard that Tyson’s cousin Rico Burton had become one of the latest to die in this seemingly never-ending bloodshed, my heart sank.

I am heartbroken for the family, as I know exactly what they are going through.

It’s why I founded the Ben Kinsella Trust in my brother’s memory in 2008. It works tirelessly to prevent others from having to experience my family’s grief and pain.

Like thousands of others, I never thought I would lose somebody I love to knife crime. I admit I used to read about the issue, think how sad it all was then turn the page.

But anyone can be a victim. Knife crime is as indiscriminate as it is senseless. It makes no distinction between age, gender or social class.

As well as Rico Burton’s death in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, in the past few days a 15 year-old boy, Deshaun James Tuitt, was fatally stabbed in Highbury Fields, North London, just minutes away from where we lost Ben.

While 87-year-old grandfather Thomas O’Halloran, who used a mobility scooter, died after a knife was plunged into him in Greenford, West London.

It is now 14 years since Ben was murdered. And yet the knife crime crisis is getting worse, not better, despite repeated promises from politicians to tackle the issue.

The blade epidemic continues to prosper, with hundreds being maimed or losing their lives to this heinous crime every year.

Staggeringly, knife crime has increased by more than 40 per cent across the country in the past decade.

Figures from March 2022 show there has been a ten per cent increase in knife crime in England and Wales on the previous 12 months.

In 2021, 30 teenagers were murdered with a knife or sharp object in London — the highest number since records began at the end of the Second World War in 1945.

I will never forget the awful memories of being at the hospital where Ben had been taken and being told by the nurses that he wasn’t going to make it.

The police force area with the highest level of knife crime in 2021 was Cleveland, in Yorkshire, with a total of 72 offences for every 100,000 people.

And yet offenders caught repeatedly carrying knives are not being jailed in almost half of cases.

Official figures show that in 2021-22, 2,400 of the around 4,200 people convicted under a 2015 law mandating minimum sentences for those caught with a weapon twice were jailed. The others received suspended sentences, community orders, fines or discharges.

At these dark moments, the fight against knife crime can seem hopeless.

Yet, in the memory of our loved ones, we must all do our bit to bring change, including the police, Government, schools, parents and society as a whole.

In September 2008 the Ben Kinsella Trust took a leading part in The People’s March, where hundreds turned out to demand changes to knife crime laws.

In March 2010 we had a major breakthrough when then justice secretary Jack Straw announced the introduction of “Ben’s Law”, raising the mandatory minimum sentence for a knife murder from 15 years to 25 years.

The Ben Kinsella Trust also educates more than 4,000 young people every year about the dangers of knife crime and advises them on how to stay safe.

But knife crime is like a poisonous weed with its roots embedded deep into our society.

The actions we have seen from politicians just cut the head off the weed — but it regrows, and regrows stronger.

Governments and administrations move on quickly and leave behind little or no legacy.

We need politicians from all parties to agree on a long-term strategy to tackle this. Not just law and order, but the root causes for prevention and intervention.

Otherwise, in another ten years we will just be back here again, laying more flowers, mourning the loss of another promising young life and wondering how and why we ever let it come to this.