Joe Whitchurch's mum calls for end to knife crime

Lisa Kilkenny said losing Joe changed her life forever

The mother of a teenage boy who was stabbed to death by a drug dealer after a Boxing Day argument has said she is fighting to get knives off the streets.

Lisa Kilkenny's 16-year-old son Joe Whitchurch was murdered in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire, in December 2020 by Jake Rollinson.

Rollinson, 21, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 19 years in March.

Ms Kilkenny said losing a son was something you never recovered from.

She added: "The loss of a child is devastating. It's something that you wake every morning and the realisation is that your child is dead. There's no easy way around it.

"You kind of start building your life around your grief.

"It changes your life forever and you are never happy anymore. You just learn to live with it."

Ms Kilkenny said she still could not believe her son was dead

She said when she was initially called to the hospital, she did not think it was serious until a nurse sat down with her.

"She said: 'This is bad; I don't want you to have any hopes here'," she recalled.

"I was staring in disbelief. It was like you were in some surreal world of a bad dream.

"I run up to the cemetery most days and I can't believe my son is here. My son is dead because somebody murdered him and when I say it, it's not real."

Joe was the eldest of three brothers

She said she was backing a week-long national campaign against knife crime.

Nottinghamshire Police will be carrying out educational events at schools, using metal-detecting walk-through knife arches, and patrols in knife crime hotspots.

"If you carry a knife, it's as if you want to kill somebody," she said.

"Even if you say it's protection, people's own knives have been used on themselves. Carrying a knife is only going to end in tears. Any knife we take off the streets is a life saved.

"I will never recover from this and I have to fight. If another parent does not have to go through this, we have helped. And Joe has helped."