The mother who chose to become friends with her son’s KILLER
When Joan’s son James was killed by a single punch to the head, the drunken stranger responsible was jailed for just 30 months. After her plea for a tougher sentence was denied, she decided to meet him — and unfathomably they began to form a bond. Now a hit play tells their story
Jacob Dunne was buzzing. It was summer 2011 and he’d been drinking vodka and cheap champagne since the early afternoon. He’d also been snorting line after line of cocaine and a friend had obligingly just slipped half a pill of ecstasy into his drink.
Then after midnight came the call that would change his life. a few of his mates had got into a scuffle in Nottingham’s old Market Square. Jacob put the phone down and, in his own words, ‘immediately went to get stuck in’.
In the short time it took Jacob to sprint there, the argy-bargy had almost died down, he later recalled. but that didn’t stop the 19-year- old from steaming in, clenching his fingers into a fist and — in a drug and alcohol-fuelled fit of rage — planting a punch into the side of the head of a man he’d never met.
Jacob knew something was wrong. He’d thrown plenty of punches before and knew his way around a fight. Most nights out, he and his friends would get into a scrap. but this one felt different.
‘Usually when you punch someone, they stagger back or lean into you, or, of course, punch you back,’ Jacob later said. ‘but none of those things happened that night.’
James Hodgkinson dropped to the floor like he’d been shot. Jacob panicked — and ran.
He could not have known as he fled into the night that the 28-year-old trainee paramedic he’d just attacked would be pronounced dead in hospital nine days later after his mother turned off a life-support machine. James had suffered a bleed to the brain from the impact of his head hitting the pavement.
one punch. That was all it took to make Jacob Dunne a killer.
This harrowing true story has now been reimagined as a play, currently showing at the Nottingham Playhouse ahead of a likely transfer to London’s West End. It’s a fitting venue for a story which takes place almost exclusively in the city.
Punch, written by Nottingham-born playwright James Graham — author of the acclaimed Dear England, about Gareth Southgate’s stewardship of the English football team — has rightly garnered rave reviews.
The play, which the Mail saw recently, charts Jacob’s life from childhood to his spell in prison — and his subsequent participation in an extraordinary restorative justice initiative alongside his victim’s parents.
When the curtain came down, the audience rose to its feet. The rosy cheeks and shiny eyes of those filing out the Playhouse were testament to the redemptive power of this troubling story.
So ExacTLy how did Jacob Dunne — a drug-dealing thug from a deprived area — turn his life around and go from ‘onepunch’ teenage killer to community ambassador and social campaigner?
Dunne grew up in The Meadows, an area of Nottingham by the River Trent, that had been developed in the
19th century to accommodate the industrial city’s growing population, which boomed over eightfold.
by the time Dunne was born in 1992, The Meadows had become a rabbit warren of crime.
The council estate was a labyrinth of tunnels, underpasses, alleyways and ccTV blindspots: ideal for drug-dealers and petty criminals seeking to evade the police.
Its reputation as a hotbed of crime persists. In March this year alone, Nottinghamshire Police recorded 29 cases of violence and sexual offences occurring in The Meadows; 24 of anti- social behaviour; 17 of criminal damage and arson; and 19 cases of shoplifting — and all within an area of less than two square miles.
Jacob’s parents separated when he was seven, his father moving 70 miles away to Manchester. His family were, in his own words, ‘respectable working class’: They were honest and hard-working, but hard up. Jacob would later find out his mother took out seven credit cards just to stay afloat.
Jacob struggled in school, belatedly being diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, as well as being placed on the autism spectrum.
by 13, he was bunking off lessons to smoke marijuana, drink alcohol and while away the days playing computer games. by night, he was smashing windows and breaking into properties for sport.
It seemed that for this young man, like so many on the fringes of society, the die had been cast.
as Jacob grew, he acquired a taste for violence.
In his compelling autobiography Right From Wrong, Jacob compares the thrill of being stripped to the waist and throwing punches with that of ‘pulling a fit girl’.
It might be hard for many to understand but, for Jacob Dunne, fighting was electrifying. and it was this toxic enthusiasm for brawling that led him to act as he did at around 1am on July 31, 2011.
The victim of Dunne’s fatal blow was 28- year- old James Hodgkinson, from the leafy North London suburb of Islington. The trainee paramedic had been watching England’s cricketers play India at Trent bridge earlier in the day with his father, David, and younger brother, Philip.
The three had later gone on to yates’s Wine Lodge in Market Square. It was here that one of Dunne’s friends nicked James’ sunglasses. James demanded them back. There was a war of words — and then Jacob turned up.
David Hodgkinson chased after Jacob as his son lay senseless.
Dunne was unaware that he had left his victim in a coma, so went on holiday to Tenerife in the days after the incident, along with his mother and younger brother, Sam. It wasn’t until he returned and discovered his friends had been questioned by the police that he realised the trouble he was in.
and then it finally happened: ‘We’re arresting you on suspicion of the murder of James Hodgkinson,’ Dunne recalled. ‘It was pure panic,’ he told the Mail in 2020. ‘Disbelief . . . I was scared. I didn’t intend to do serious harm, neither did I imagine I could have killed a man with a single blow.’
but Jacob wasn’t the only one who struggled to believe what he’d done. ‘you couldn’t have done this, Jacob. I know you’re covering for your mates,’ cried his mother desperately as he awaited a court date, strapped with an electronic tag.
Throughout the trial, Dunne felt unable to make eye contact with James’s family. Instead, he stared at the courtroom floor.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Despite the unprovoked nature of the attack he was sentenced to just 30 months in prison. Such leniency was due to the fact that — despite his violent lifestyle — Dunne had no previous convictions, nor had he used a weapon on James, who died from the impact of hitting the ground rather than the punch itself.
MR JUSTICE Flaux summed up the feelings of many by describing the attack as ‘mindless’. but to some extent, the real story of Jacob Dunne begins 14 months later, when he was released from the since-demolished HMP Glen Parva. because the Jacob Dunne story is one of tragedy, undoubtedly, but also redemption, reconciliation and — perhaps above all — hope.
Would you meet the man who
killed your child? Would you look that man in the eyes and shake his hand — could you find it in your heart to forgive?
These were the questions James’s parents — David Hodgkinson and Joan Scourfield — would come to ask themselves.
After Jacob was sent to prison, David and Joan had appealed for a tougher sentence, convinced that their son’s life was worth more than 30 months.
That appeal was denied. Instead, David and Joan were offered an opportunity for the restorative justice that would, in time, bring them some solace. According to the Restorative Justice Council, a national, independent body, the practice ‘gives victims the chance to meet or communicate with their offender to explain the real impact of the crime’.
For David and Joan, this first meant a written exchange. But what do you ask the man who killed your son?
The first questions they settled on were direct and matter-of-fact. Or as Jacob described: ‘Harsh and brutally honest’.
‘Why did you do it? Did James spill your drink? Did he chat up a girl you were with? Do you have martial arts or boxing training?’
What started as written correspondence through an intermediary became, over time, something more complex, more personal and then — two and a half years later, in 2015 — the three agreed to meet in person.
The morning of their first meeting, at a community centre in Suffolk, Jacob recalls being ‘a bloody wreck’. He sat in a waiting room for what felt like an eternity, cold sweat pouring down the back of his neck.
Finally, alongside a mediator, he was brought in to meet the parents of the man he had killed.
And then, almost four years since the punch, their first exchange: ‘Hello,’ said Joan.
Jacob met their eyes briefly, and then fixed them back to the floor like he had in the court room.
He leant in to pick up a glass of water and spilled it all over the floor. Joan leant over to help him.
And so began a meeting no one present will ever forget. They discussed the punch, before moving on to discuss Jacob, his progress and recent GCSE results.
Joan and David told Jacob about their son. How he loved helping people and adored extreme sports — and how he would never get the chance to achieve his dreams.
It is this meeting that forms the climax of James Graham’s new play. The scene is simultaneously heart-wrenching, cripplingly awkward and — at times — darkly funny.
When Jacob watches the show now, he leaves before the second act, unwilling to put himself through it all again.
Graham also consulted David and Joan before writing the scene.
Of course, they will never be able to see Jacob as anything other than the man who killed their beloved son. Yet, over the past decade, the three have been in constant contact, supporting one another and learning to deal with their respective grief, guilt and trauma through quiet reconciliation.
Thirteen years after the punch, 32year-old Jacob Dunne has a firstclass degree in criminology and two children with wife Jess. He’s made public appearances including on television and at Russell Group universities, and can boast a TEDx talk, an award-winning BBC podcast and now the play.
He attributes much of his success to the surprising support afforded to him by David and Joan. ‘It astonished me that they wanted me to make something of myself,’ Jacob admitted. ‘It gave me a lot of strength.’
He has met with David and Joan on numerous occasions since, even appearing with Joan on ITV’s This Morning sofa. They remain in contact to this day with Joan even admitting: ‘I suppose we’re friends.’
James Hodgkinson is far from the only person to die from a single punch. While no official figures are recorded, the charity One Punch UK documented 80 such fatalities between 2007 and 2017.
The Mail spoke with One Punch UK founder Maxine ThompsonCurl last week. Her son, Kristian, was on a night out in County Durham in September 2010, when he was approached by a stranger asking for a cigarette who then punched him, just once.
He died from catastrophic brain injuries ten months later. Kristian was just 19 years old.
‘I immediately thought the lad who hit him would’ve been charged with murder,’ Maxine said. ‘But then you’re told there was no intent, because it was just one punch. Then the next thing you know they’re only charged with GBH.’
GIVEn a sentence not dissimilar to that of Jacob Dunne, Kristian’s killer, Mark Berry, served only nine months behind bars. In Maxine’s eyes, that was no justice at all.
She now campaigns for tougher sentencing and increased awareness of just how dangerous one punch can be.
On Wednesday last week, Conservative MP Dehenna Davison — whose own father Dominic was killed by a single strike when she was 13 — spoke in Parliament to welcome a government review into onepunch offences.
‘I can safely say from experience that no sentence would ever be enough to make up for the tragedy, the trauma and the anguish faced by individuals who have lost loved ones like that,’ she told the Commons.
‘But four years is not justice,’ she added, referring to the average sentence for such killings.
Her father’s killer was released after just 18 months.
Davison’s dismay and frustration at that sentence echoes that of Maxine, David, Joan and so many others up and down the country.
Unlike Joan and David, Maxine was not offered restorative justice. ‘It’s a postcode lottery the support you receive,’ she told the Mail. not that she necessarily wants contact with the man who killed her son.
She has limited sympathy for the perpetrators of one-punch crimes such as Jacob Dunne: ‘You might do a podcast, a play, write a book — but you still killed someone.’
Jacob himself sees it a little differently: ‘ I’m more than that one incident,’ he said. ‘We are not all products of the worst thing we did in our lives.’
Either way, nothing can change the fact that James Hodgkinson — who would have been 41 this year — is dead, thanks to one moment of mindless violence.
‘Stop. Think. Then walk away.’ That’s Maxine’s advice for anyone on the verge of throwing a punch.
Because while those who take a life still have time to seek redemption and find happiness, for their victims there is no such hope.
Punch is showing at the nottingham Playhouse until May 25.