BY ROS WYNNE-JONES

became a firm friend after he visited the jail where John was studying law.

John also witnessed the killing of volunteer Saskia Jones. Two years on, John says he barely sleeps and has frequent flashbacks of 23-year-old Saskia being stabbed. “I can’t eat,” he says. “It’s hard for me to feel positive about anything.”

John had helped collect Khan from a train station that day, a man sweating in a huge coat.

He fought Khan with a lectern, a heavy chair and then the fire hydrant.

Afterwards he said: “I was spraying it in his eyes. At first it seemed to do the job – he was all covered in foam. Then he came bursting through it again with the knives.”

John has been angered by the multiple failings revealed during the inquest into Jack and Saskia’s deaths. The Liverpool attack on November 14, he says, proves nothing has changed: “Where’s the lessons been learned? The errors were ridiculous.”

Last month, John, Darryn and Steven were given Police High Commendations for Bravery, with Cressida Dick praising his “selfless heroism”, but he says he couldn’t bring himself to shake her hand.

John says: “I said it was Covid but it’s because I blame the police.”

A former junkie, John was jailed for 18 years for manslaughter after his co-defendant fatally punched the victim during the burglary in 2005.

For two years he has been helped by charity JENGBA, which campaigns against the joint enterprise law, to try and get his sentence retrospectively reduced – but with no success yet.

John will mark Monday’s thinking about the two kind, inspirational young people who died that day.

“Because he wins if you think anything other than positive thoughts about Jack and Saskia,” he says.

“And Khan’s taken enough”.

HAUNTED John Crilly