Under attack!
As the scorching sun prickled my skin, my thoughts flashed to my eldest, Ricky, 27.
I hope he’s looking after himself, I thought.
It was a blazing-hot day in September 2016, and I knew he was working outside as a council maintenance man.
No matter how old your kids get, you still worry. I was right to be concerned. Later, Ricky texted me. I’ve got a headache, he wrote. Typical! It’s boiling out there. Don’t forget to put your sunscreen and hat on tomorrow, I wrote. OK, Mum. Night, he replied. Night, I texted back. Ricky was my firstborn, my mummy’s boy.
He had blond hair, big blue eyes, and me and his dad Paul Hayden, then 55, adored him.
Ricky grew into a real home bird, was a brilliant big brother to our other two – April, then 23, and Perry, 20.
A workaholic, too, he was employed in security in the evenings and weekends. He even had some celeb clients.
His dad and I couldn’t have been prouder of our boy.
Sadly, Paul and I had split earlier that year. I’d moved in with my parents, 10 minutes away, but Ricky would pop round with fish and chips for us all.
That night, I went to bed as normal. Only, at 1.30am, my phone rang – it was one of my old neighbours.
‘Get down here quick,’ she said. ‘Ricky’s been stabbed!’
What? I thought, confused. Stabbed – how, why?
I knew he wasn’t working that night. He’d been at home.
Adrenaline surged through me as I sped round there with my mum Irene, then 72.
As we pulled up, police cordons blocked the street.
Then I saw an ambulance – and Ricky was lying on the stretcher inside.
‘It that my son?!’ I cried, horrified. ‘Ricky Hayden?’
The paramedic looked up as I spoke, shocked.
‘We’re fighting to save his life,’ he said, shutting the door.
Minutes later, the ambulance screamed off.
Then, stomach churning, I saw a huge pool of blood on the pavement near our house.
Mum and I followed the ambulance to the Royal London Hospital.
And there, the consultant soon gave us grave news. ‘He’s critical,’ he said. Ricky had needed four blood transfusions in the ambulance and had suffered a heart attack on the way to hospital.
Nobody could tell me anything about the stabbing.
Only that Paul, 55, had been wounded, too – he had been taken to Bloomfield Hospital, in Chelmsford, was being treated there for knife wounds.
And our poor Staffie dog Roxy was with the RSPCA…HER throat had been cut.
What the hell happened? I thought, absolutely horrified.
Doctors fought to save Ricky’s life – and, after half an hour, the consultant sat us down.
‘Ricky’s been stabbed in the main artery in his left thigh,’ he explained.
It’d damaged the major arteries and veins– his only chance of survival was amputating his leg.
‘Do what you have to, just save him,’ I sobbed.
So surgeons amputated Ricky’s left leg.
After the op, he was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, where I finally got to see him.
He was covered in wires and his eyes were closed.
But, apart from a cut on his head and blood on his fingers,
he looked just like my Ricky. We talked to him. ‘Keep fighting, Ricky,’ I begged him.
His friends arrived, while April rushed to see Paul.
Thankfully, the knife injuries to Paul’s hands and legs weren’t life threatening.
But, later that afternoon, Ricky’s consultant had bad news.
Ricky’s brain and head were swelling.
‘There’s nothing more we can do,’ the consultant said to us.
I burst into hysterical tears as he told me to call the family. It was time to say goodbye. Perry and April arrived, and an ambulance brought Paul.
In shock and disbelief, we went in to see Ricky.
We listened as the nurse explained that, once the fluid bag being pumped into him ran out, the machine helping him to breathe would stop. His body would shut down.
We spent four hours talking to our boy and kissing him…
Finally, at 11.41pm on 13 September 2016, Ricky took his last breath.
Going home without him that night was a blur.
We couldn’t go back to the house because Forensics were investigating, so we went to my brother Kevin’s.
Next morning, the police came to see us.
They’d taken statements from several lads in connection with the stabbing.
With CCTV and statements from Paul and Perry, we pieced together what’d happened.
Paul had been watching telly at around 1.30am, when our home-security system flashed up on the TV.
It showed a picture of a bloke messing with Perry’s moped at the front of the house.
Paul had gone to chase them off, followed by our dog Roxy.
But there’d been more lads out there and they’d attacked.
Hearing the commotion, Ricky had run downstairs in his boxers.
And, somehow in all the chaos, Ricky had been stabbed with a machete, and Paul and Roxy wounded
with a knife. Unthinkable.
I felt so angry. My son had lost his life – over a moped. Roxy and Paul survived, although Paul’s injuries meant he couldn’t return to his security job. And, in the weeks that passed, we lived in a grief-stricken limbo. Police charged two teenagers with the murder of Ricky and attempted murder of Paul. I’d wake on Sunday mornings, expecting to hear the radio blaring outside as Ricky cleaned his van. Then there were the endless questions… What exactly happened, why had my family been targeted? And why was my boy dead?
The consultant said there was nothing more they could do