'Everything came so quick but I don't regret what happened'

Jordon Ibe is determined to rekindle his career having overcome tragedy, trauma and mental health problems

- Sam Dalling

Jordon Ibe was not supposed to go to the park that day. He reiterates the point several times when recalling the events of 17 June 2008. Ibe's mum had forbidden his attendance at Tabard Gardens in Southwark, south-east London, but he went anyway; a kickabout was too much of a draw for the then 12-year-old. That day Ibe witnessed his friend David Idowu being stabbed through the heart. A few weeks later, Idowu died.

"I'd not even seen a butter knife," Ibe says. The cadence of his voice has slowed, his words so soft they are virtually inaudible. "To see that happen in front of me... my friend wasn't about that life. He got stabbed because he had the wrong school uniform on. I saw it and ran out of the park, ran home. I remember seeing myself on the news on the CCTV.

"You don't really know what to do. It wasn't like I was going to say anything to my mum because I wasn't supposed to be there. She didn't know I'd witnessed a death. I told her a few years later.

"I don't think I really processed it until I was a bit older. I'd not even been in a school fight, but I'd witnessed something like that. It's something I'll never forget, but I've never really spoken about it. Being so young, you're not really going to be processing trauma like that."

Ibe was not intending to speak about the tragedy, nor does he raise it to stir sympathy. It comes up naturally during a broad and open conversation on mental health and anxiety, Ibe segueing to his childhood after describing being robbed at gunpoint at the age of 20.

He had been tailed from a London hotel one morning and, as he reached Surrey Quays, his car was bumped. It was lunchtime, broad daylight. "I got out not noticing who was in the car," he says. "They had balaclavas on. One put a machete to my chest and said: 'If you move, I'll stab you.' Everything happened so fast but slow at the same time. My silly arse tried to get away and the passenger pulled a gun out."