Weak, pathetic, cowards
As stabbed footballer’s killers get life for murder on nightclub dancefloor, victim’s mother demands crackdown on knife carriers
The mother of a footballer stabbed to death on a nightclub dancefloor called for harsher knife sentences yesterday after his killers were jailed for life.
Remy Gordon, 23, and Kami Carpenter, 22, had blamed each other for the murder of Cody Fisher in a Boxing Day revenge attack following a minor incident at another club on Christmas eve.
After they were jailed for a minimum of 26 and 25 years respectively, Tracey Fisher said she feared the sentences would not act as a deterrent.
She did not set foot in the courtroom during the trial because she could not bear to face her youngest son’s killers.
Outside Birmingham Crown Court she said those who armed themselves with knives were ‘weak, pathetic, cowards, and they will ruin so many lives’.
Mrs Fisher said her family will ‘forever live in the shadow’ of her son’s ‘senseless murder’.
The court heard that Gordon posted an image on Snapchat asking for help in identifying Mr Fisher, 23, who had accidentally bumped into him while moving through a packed nightclub two days earlier.
he and Carpenter then smuggled a knife through security at the Crane nightclub in Birmingham to carry out
‘Threatening to shank him up’
the attack in December 2022. Judge Paul Farrer KC said Gordon was the group leader who ‘planned and drove’ the murder after feeling ‘disrespected’ by Mr Fisher over the earlier incident. But he said that it was Carpenter who was most probably responsible for the fatal wounds.
earlier, Mr Fisher’s girlfriend Jessica Chatwin said her world ‘shattered’ as her boyfriend took his last breaths in her arms. She initially thought that her partner had been knocked out, until she saw the ‘ferocious’ weapon protruding from his chest.
She said: ‘Seconds before that moment I remember turning around and looking at Cody behind me and he gave me the biggest smile full of love and happiness – now I question if that was his goodbye.
‘I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with Cody. Now I have to face the world without his love and guidance, something he always showed me while we were together.’ In a statement read out to the court, Mrs Fisher said she felt her own life ended along with her child’s, adding: ‘It is as though I too was stabbed straight through the heart.’
She said she had taught him to stick up for himself, adding: ‘he was only doing what his mum told him to do and I think about this every day, but you never expect your child to be murdered.
‘I have seen myself go from the happiest, outgoing person, to fighting the hell out of just getting through each and every horrendous, never-ending day.’
Michael Duck KC, prosecuting, told the court that following the ‘orchestrated attack’, Gordon was captured on CCTV in a pizza takeaway restaurant laughing as he re-enacted the stabbing.
he said the defendants had shown no remorse, with Gordon attempting to flee to Jamaica and Carpenter to London. Neither betrayed any emotion as their sentences were handed down. Mr Fisher, who lived in Studley, Warwickshire, was a school sports coach who had played for Bromsgrove Sporting and Stratford Town football clubs.
Mr Duck said of the earlier incident at Solihull’s Popworld nightspot that ‘Cody Fisher, it seems, did little more than touch Remy Gordon’s back’.
The court heard that just 45 minutes later, Gordon sent messages on Snapchat to identify Mr Fisher and threatening to ‘shank him up’. he and Carpenter were found guilty of murder following a ten-week trial.
Detective Inspector Michelle Thurgood, from West Midlands Police, said it was an ‘almost incomprehensible’ incident.
She added: ‘If you are a parent, guardian or teacher, I implore you to please talk to the young people you care for about Cody’s story, and how numerous lives have been ruined because of the use of a knife.’