Mum launches knife crime campaign after son is killed

Mikey Roynon, 16, was stabbed in the neck at a house party

- ALEX ROSS

Mikey Roynon was proudly wearing his new tracksuit and trainers - bought for him by his mother to mark the start of his GCSE exams – when he came bounding down the stairs at his family home in Kingswood, near Bristol.

The 16-year-old had said he was heading to Nando’s with some friends while his mother Hayley Ryall was going to a work event in Birmingham, leaving Mikey overnight with a friend for the first night.

“I saw him come down and I smiled and said, ‘You look bloody handsome,’” Ms Ryall told The Independent. “He smiled back and then, as he walked out of the door, he turned around and said, ‘I love you’. And that’s how I’ll remember the last time I saw him.”

Hours later, Mikey, 16, was stabbed in the neck with a zombie knife at a 16th birthday party in Bath, and died at the scene. Ms Ryall, a Slimming World consultant, knew something was wrong when she discovered 37 missed calls on her mobile – mostly from Mikey. But she had no idea that her entire world was about to crumble.

“Mikey’s friends were calling me from his phone, and when I called back they said he’d been stabbed and that he’d gone,” she said. “I couldn’t – I didn’t – believe it at first. I sent my friend to the nearby hospital to find him and got another friend to drive me to Bath. But when I arrived, I found out he didn’t make it to the hospital.

“I saw at the address [of the house party] there was a forensic tent and officers walking around in white suits. A police officer told me what happened and said I should go home. I was stunned. I can’t explain the feeling.”