I turned off son’s life support after killing
DOCTORS told Michelle McPhillips her 28-year-old son Jonathan, known as JJ, was brain dead after he spent four days in intensive care on a life support machine.
So the pub landlady made a heartbreaking decision.
“I cradled him with my left arm, pulled him into me, and put my hand on his heart and then told them: ‘Switch it off,’” she said.
“I kept cradling him, telling him to go in peace, that he was free now. It took 20 minutes for his heart to stop beating.”
She had been called to the scene where he collapsed in Islington, North London, on February 24, 2017, after being stabbed. She watched as paramedics tended to him.
“They sat JJ upright on a stretcher to make him comfortable.
“He reached across and grabbed my hand and said ‘mum’ – the last time my son ever spoke to me.” JJ was pronounced brain dead on February 28. Michelle decided to turn off dad-of two JJ’s life support at 9.30pm, not wanting her eight-year-old nephew’s March 1 birthday to be forever linked to the tragedy. This month, Michelle sat down with Sophie Linden, London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. She and some bereaved mums had sent her a box of 100 photographs of young people who had been stabbed to death – with 100 roses. Michelle said: “Three hundred people a year dying from knife crime? That is a plane load of people or more. That is a disaster. But what’s being done?” Michael Dyra, 22 is charged with JJ’s murder and due at the Old Bailey in May.