Murdered Ian Kirwan will never get to be a dad - widow

Ian Kirwan was a software engineer contractor for Jaguar Land Rover

A man who was stabbed to death outside a supermarket had "longed" to be a dad, his wife said.

Ian Kirwan, 53, was attacked by a group of boys at an Asda in Redditch on 8 March and died on the floor of the store after being stabbed in the heart.

A 15-year-old was sentenced to at least 14 years on Wednesday for his murder.

In a statement read out to court, Mr Kirwan's wife Lyndsey Blythe said the couple had been looking into adopting after unsuccessful rounds of IVF.

"That chance has now been taken away from Ian, and he'll never have the chance to be called daddy," she said.

"Ian was my rock, my soulmate, my husband - Ian didn't deserve to die."

She described her husband as a "wonderful person" with "the biggest heart", and that she had suffered from panic attacks and brain fog after his murder.

Ms Blythe added that the couple's future together had been taken away and she would "never" be able to recover.

Mr Kirwan, an artificial intelligence engineer at Jaguar Land Rover in Coventry, had travelled to the town's B&Q to buy a light switch and had only stopped in the Asda to use the customer toilets.

He was attacked after confronting the group of boys for messing about in the toilets, Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Three other boys, aged 14, 15 and 16, were given youth rehabilitation orders after being cleared of murder, but found guilty of violent disorder.

None of them can be legally identified because of their age.

During sentencing, judge Mr Justice Fraser reflected that even during the trial, media outlets had "been reporting fatal stabbings on a depressingly regular basis".

In a statement following the verdicts last month, Mr Kirwan's family paid tribute to his passion for peace and education

Anti-violence campaigner Alison Cope told BBC Hereford and Worcester more needed to be done to prevent knife crime.

"A life sentence is the right sentence, but it's not deterring people - we're not seeing knife crime reduced, it's going up and up," she said.

"The solution is obvious, until we educate everybody, about the dangers of knives and the reality of it, this is just going to be a repeated headline over and over."

Her son Joshua Ribera, also known as Depzman, was killed in a knife attack outside a party in Birmingham in 2013.