Ali   00:00
It was like a cry from the pit of my stomach. It was a constant “no”..it was actually like “like no man”. And I didn't even know him, and I never will get to know him.

Heidi  00:21
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Prelude Podcast, where we feature personal stories told by people from all walks of life. In each episode, our guests share their experiences and the important moments that have shaped their perspective on the world. 

Prelude explores the moments that make up our lives, what it means to be human in today's world, and what we can learn by listening to each other's stories. 

So we're really excited to launch our series and in this opening episode, Prelude introduces Ali from Greater London. 

In this episode, Ali speaks about his suburban childhood upbringing, and a sudden shift to council estate life, coaching and mentoring of teenagers through football, and helping strangers who are in need. He also shares his views on gang culture in the UK, and the enduring tragedy of knife crime across the country, through the lens of a life-changing moment for him. 

This episode contains explicit content and graphic descriptions of the events. So listener discretion is advised. We hope that you'll find listening to Ali’s journey as fascinating as we did, and if you have any comments or feedback please let us know on our social media channels. 

So, without further delay, here is Ali’s story.

Ali   01:51
My name is Ali. I'm 38 years old. So I've lived in the UK ever since I was around two-three years old. And lived in a great beautiful upbringing in Chessington for about 10 years of my life into my early teens, up to 16 actually. 

02:07
Chessington was beautiful for me because it was introducing me to a beautiful family life and surroundings. And again, through that we had a huge field which we played on with all of the lads and the girls and the boys of the neighbourhood would always congregate around there. And a lot of it would be football related or doing things that you know kids do. We had like a rope swing, we had like a little stream and the woods, so we used to ride our bikes a lot. 

02:38
Football in particular was the most important one for me. That ultimately again shaped my life, huge field like a football pitch. And I had a lot of the older lads as well playing football and I'll always remember trying to get involved that always put me as a keeper, obviously being the young one “yeh just go in goal go in goal” just like you know to take shots that were just going to smash at you.

03:02
And actually, that taught me the best way to play the game. You know, you play with it tough and then you just fine in the end and there was one guy in particular as a close family friend and a close friend of my older brother. His name is Paul. And I believe to this day that he taught me everything I know in terms of the football mentality but also the love for the game and also technically how to go about playing it because he would always spend a few more minutes after everybody's called into sleep and it's just about to go dark;  “No, do it this way. With your right foot, I tell you what, use your left for how about heading? How's your touch?”

03:36
But I did learn a lot from Chessington and especially the fact that when we later moved on to Kingston upon Thames, it was a place that we didn't necessarily want to leave Chessington, but we had to make that change. Unfortunately, we had our house repossessed after some financial struggle but we were moved to a council estate and a huge...well it was a different world basically, to the beautiful upbringing I had in Chessington with the greenery and the kids playing out there and big field straight into a kind of constrained area of a lot of people that are struggling in one block. And that, as you can imagine taught me a lot about life.

04:20
With football being a passion. It was the only constant that made me happy and it led me to this point in my life right now where we run coaching sessions - I'm part of a club called Real Dundonald, and the overall umbrella is Dundonald Development.  The reason for the name Dundonald it’s an area Wimbledon, and through playing as a Sunday league team and picking out some really good talent through the years and being successful, we won leagues, we won cups and kind of - it was the early days of social media. So you don't have like, following in that sense, but a lot of teams in the area knew who we were, and to this day know who we are now. So, along with that, it kind of snowballed the snowball effect of, playing as a Sunday League, but you could do more about this. So, the management started a youth team and brought into affiliations with the FA, and FA charter standard club, which is great, the youth team on their first season won the league. And with that kind of success and that kind of growth, it was just natural that we started summer camps, football mashups, got involved with local councils, and really getting kind of the social media or millennials away from the technology and away from the screen time, away from sorry to say, health issues, obesity, mental health issues that young kids now, are like, depressed, you come across a lot of young kids nowadays, where it's like, I scratch my head, they shouldn't be feeling the depression, they should be feeling happiness, joy, beauty, these things that life should, teach us and show us. And so we wanted to get them away from all of that, and enjoy being healthy, enjoy being out in the park playing football. And with the teachings of football, which is the slogan of the Dundonald development as well, “teaching through football”, and the team being you know, Together Each Achieve More. And that's always been the fundamentals, any ages, any gender, any abilities, all abilities, sorry, we invite them for three-hour sessions for three days a week. To simply have fun, however, learn the fundamentals of football, which ultimately stream into kind of the fundamentals of life. 

06:55
Every single one of them, goes away and goes home learning something, and the next time they come to the session, they've changed, it's really refreshing to see that the things that we do teach them and show them have been applied, and they can make a great change for themselves. And for me, that turnaround shows that we're successful. 

07:15
I've definitely and we've definitely seen kids who have come in and left as adults. So along with my work with the Dundonald development setup, I've recently started coaching with Surrey soccer schools in Cobham with a great group of like-minded coaches. I'm also collaborating with a growing sports development organization called YMKPT, where we work in sports performance, football, specifically focusing on physical fitness and mental well being. Along with that training, academy talent through to professional sportspeople. It's really rewarding, working with teens and getting them away from the horrors that go on in the street and gang violence and being a member of a gang or all this bullshit about getting into, a ridiculous culture that may end up in tragedy. 

08:14
Well, the last few years of my life I can sum up right now as quite blurry. I'm still trying to make sense of what the fuck has just happened. Now, through career and, stints of unemployment - the combination of that, and not knowing what I wanted to do in life apart from you know, making a difference, but then being sick of waking up to sales all the time and also being in a relationship where I look back at now, and it was probably something that I had obsessed over more than understanding and enjoying it, and my life completely turned around. 

08:55
Now at this point, it coincided with my parents, who had spent a long time back in Jordan, sharing, getting older with family members, but yeah, they've spent time in the UK and spend time in Jordan. Within that period, I was living in my parents flat in Kingston. My brothers and I felt that through some, illness and health issues with my parents, we decided to make sure that you know, they were here for an extended period of time, unfortunately, my mother was diagnosed with liver cancer in March/ April 2018. 

09:36
I was really struggling in the background to keep things together. And so along with, my mom's diagnosis, which really shook up the family, the impact on my mom specifically, shit got real and the family pulled together. And it was a huge adjustment that I knew I had to make it for the sake of my family. And my family and also myself. 

10:05
Living where we do, we do come across a lot of random stuff as a lot of people do when they live in, in and around council estates. But there was one instance that really shook me up when I had heard some screaming. And I looked out my window and there's this guy kind of chasing this girl, but like, she was trying to get away from him. And then I heard a bottle of wine smashed or something, what what, sorry, it turned out to be a bottle of wine, but a bottle had smashed. And I thought he actually kind of struck her with it and she turned around that she pushed him away. And by the time I moved from my bedroom, the view that I had, to my balcony, I had seen the guy grabbing her up, and then kind of pinning her to the ground and punching her. 

10:54
My first reaction was to run down. I don't know why. And looking back at is quite dangerous, because then what the guy was capable of doing. And I went down, went down, kind of shoved him out of the way and then just kept on constantly asking the girl are you okay? Are you okay? Okay. She kept saying, please call help, please call help he’s crazy. So I kept, I kept on finding him, fending him off her, and trying to fathom what the hell's going on. And clearly, this guy was a threat to this girl. So yeah, I kind of made sure that he didn't get anywhere near her until the police arrived, gave all the statements and stuff like that and arrested this dickhead. And the gentleman was an abusive partner, it turned out to be and he had threatened to kill her that night. 

11:46 
So I was actually surprised by a visit by her parents, a few days later, with a box of chocolates and a card saying thank you, you are a hero to us and all of this stuff. But really, I don't take too well you know that those compliments and I just did what came naturally to me and I had assumed that everybody else would do. So she had also messaged me as well, thanking me and saying to me, look, without your help, he would have killed me. 

12:19
So yeah, I mean, I started looking back at that. And, the breakup, my mum being diagnosed, losing that independence, wondering what the fuck I'm going to do with my career where I'm going, that happening. Yeah, I started believing that what the fuck is going on with my life, it's just not one thing after another.  

12:40
A random thing that happened in between all of that I can't even remember when it was between when it was exactly but I was coming out of work. And I saw a guy that just parked up and I'd kind of looked at another car, which was about four or five meters away. There was a pushchair, and the lady was loading her shopping into her backseat. But the pushchair was at the back of the car. There's a baby crying, and she was kind of seemed like a bit frantic. And a guy had parked up his car. I don't know why it's like an intuition thing that I've always had. I don't know. I can't explain it. I just felt something was gonna go wrong! And lo and behold, this car started just slowly rolling towards the other car with the fucking pushchair right there. So my instinct was to jump in the way so I push the pushchair out of the way, kind of maybe into the road a bit. The lady had grabbed the pushchair and I'd seen the car obviously way too close to me. So I kind of stupidly put my hands up as if I was some kind of superhero - ended up crashing my hand, broke my hand in between my wrist and my, actually my hand and my wrist. And I ended up in a plaster cast for free months. But again, the lady was looking at me screaming, thinking, “Oh my God, he's been crushed!” as I was, like, worried about her. But I hadn't been crushed and I didn't really feel the pain. But yeah, so saving that baby as well. I don't even look back at it saving a baby. I just thought just doing what's instinctive and doing the right thing. But yeah, ended up with being in a cast of three months and what else? What next? 

14:27
So we've all done this that was happening in my life. I started believing that I maybe had a purpose to literally help people. Sometimes think like, oh, I'm thinking like as if it's a film when really I'm not. I'm not ever in on helping people about recognition. I never helped people to expect anything back. But I find so much satisfaction and a great feeling when I do. But the fact that I haven't chosen to be in that place, a lot of people have told me for the shit that I've been through, you're at the right placed at the right time.  I always used to question was I actually in the wrong place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time. It all gets a bit confusing, but the fact remains, I was there. And I'd never ever once thought about my own safety, only about the safety of others. And they needed help at that point.

15:23
All of the shit that had happened, occurred within the space of three months. And very intense. I started becoming very indifferent towards my own feelings, I felt very numb. Not knowing that this was all a build-up to the potentially life-changing tragedy that happened. In the early hours of August the 5th. 

15:42
My brother and I, we have one very close friend. His name is Hamza he lives quite a bit away from us now, so we don't tend to see him that much. And that night, well that the next morning, we were planning to go to the beach. So that actually meant that we needed to be up very, very early. But for some reason, it struck midnight, and I just couldn't get to sleep. Bit fidgety, just had a really rotten feeling in my stomach and kind of that feeling of intuition came up again. By two o'clock in the morning, I couldn't sleep and I think to myself, I don't know if it's for excitement. I hadn't seen Hamza for a long time a brother hasn't seen him for a long time. It was just like, after everything that happened, it was a much neater getaway much-needed trip. But for some reason, I just couldn't get to sleep. 

16:44
So it all started at around 1.30 am and I heard some commotion outside. But again, around the block, and the estate, you tend to hear maybe, people messing around or coming back from the club. Whatever. It's just like most people - the London sounds I’d call them. But this time, it felt like there was some commotion. So I peeked out the window, my bedroom window at that point. And it seemed like a group of young lads kind of moving in different directions. And then a little bit of kind of commotion didn't think anything of it. And I went to the balcony, approximately quarter to two, to have a cigarette. So by the time I got on my balcony and sparked my cigarette, I had heard screams of help, cries of help, and not the usual ones that you would hear, the pit of the stomach help. And something was seriously wrong.

17:43
I couldn't make out the lads, but there were a few. One in particular who was either dazed or at what that point initially I thought he was drunk kind of, maybe falling in the street. But I could clearly see, to my horror, a splurt of blood out of his neck, and he hit the ground.

18:09
After I'd seen this guy hit the ground and his friend get onto the phone is space of seconds, by the way. He must have been trying to connect to an ambulance at that point. And he was shouting out “I need an ambulance! I need an ambulance! Where are the police!” Etcetera.

18:28
Yeah, I mean, again, that literally two, three seconds, I'd seen that. I remember getting my trainers on and running down the stairs, I don't even get into the lift, we're on the fifth floor. And looking back at it now and through statements and police statements. It turned out that I was downstairs within 17 to 22 seconds. I don't know how I made it that quickly by sprinted down there. So I had observed the scene, and upon approaching the victim, the seriousness of the situation had hit me so hard that I just broke into action.

19:14
The poor fella had been stabbed in the neck. And no one had been administering any type of CPR or anything that could comfort him. And I just jumped straight into action. And look, I don't know anything about how to save anybody's life or medically or what I need to be doing. But I do remember some things from a really like basic first aid at work course that I did back in my jobs before - I was nominated to do it and I actually enjoyed doing it because just in case anybody had any issues in the office or asthma or any insulin that they needed I would always kind of go onto the scene and help them out. So with that basic first aid, I knew to assess the situation. However, in this situation, it's very hard because you don't know what's going on around you. And I quickly had observed that, that most of them were his friends. But there was a threat of potentially the person who did this still lurking around.  

20:18
I approached this, this kid, and he was critically injured, spurting blood out of his neck. And one of his friends constantly asking him, stay at work to stay alive. And I instantly started administering some kind of CPR. And I looked around, I told one of his friends to apply pressure to the wound. And at that point, it was a somebody who would, who lived above in the first-floor balcony or something she had brought down like some towels. But this happens so quickly, I don't understand how it all kind of pieced together. But I had these towels. And I was constantly telling this guy to just let if you need to help me, we need to keep this guy alive. Place as much pressure as you can on the wound on the neck wound, just keep applying pressure. And what I had done was constantly checked his pulse, and started giving him chest compressions. And I really want to set the scene here, because, some people have seen some crazy shit in their lives. But at that point, I'm bearing in mind what had happened to me recently. Remember the mind frame of being what the fuck next? I kind of like expected it in the feeling of why I was up that night. And I should have been really asleep. I was up for a reason I was there. And I needed to help. It was as simple as that. 

21:46
Now to set the scene, now, running down five flights of stairs, in a block should be tiring enough. I can't even remember being out of breath at the bottom of the stairs running into the scene. Or eventually walking into the scene and seeing what the fuck is going on in front of me, the guy is laying down spurting out blood in his neck, his mates constantly asking him, you alive, are you alive? What's going on? Are you going to die?  And other guys not knowing what's going on, two or three girls that were screaming or crying. Other people trying to help, there was actually somebody who was kind of quite drunk who kept on coming back and forth to the scene, and we tried to kind of keep them away. It was just a fucked up scenario. And we all waiting for the police. We're all waiting for an ambulance. And they didn't eventually come until eight, nine minutes later. And that's eight, nine minutes of people who are not professionals in saving anybody's life. Hence, we need to kick into action, there were two other bystanders that were really a great help to me, passing me towels, making sure that we applied pressure on the guy's neck, where he had, unfortunately, been stabbed. It looked been stabbed, I checked, if he had had any other injuries around his body, visibly, I couldn't see anything, no other blood from other parts of his body. So it was clear that that was the main injury, didn't have time to ask questions or anything like that. Just kick into action and get started. So one of them held, I kept on constantly telling one of his friends - who was distraught, he was absolutely distraught - you get the screams, you get the cries of what's going on. And for me, I honed in at that point, and just focused on this young victim. He was a young, in his early 20s from Asian origin by the looks of it. And one of his friends was actually speaking to him in Arabic. So I do speak Arabic. And I actually started, saying to him, stay with us, stay with us, we've got you, you're okay, you’re comforted. Just stay with us. Talk to us if you can. 

23:52
And with the injury, unfortunately, it felt like he wanted to tell us something or he wanted to speak. And at that point, I kept on saying to him, just reassuring him he doesn't need to say anything, and we're there for him. Now through all of this, I'm doing chest compressions. And with every chest compression, you hear the squidge of blood where was soaked across his chest. You've got people around, trying to help when really we needed to clear the area and make sure that they're kind of not crowding, whatever was happening, and there was people watching which I found really fucking weird people from the balconies and stuff and they just didn't seem like they were helping. But again, I don't blame them because what they're just what they're looking at is, is quite horrific.

24:41  
And through giving them chest compressions, we tried to keep him alive as long as possible. I started feeling, unfortunately, like no pulse in his left hand but a really faint one in the right hand. So at no point did I stop doing chest compressions, at 10, take a second,  10, take a second.  At the same time, there was, there's one other lady, I believe she was on the phone to the ambulance. And they were kind of instructing me to do a few things which I'd already been doing. Luckily enough. And so when the police arrived, that was a life-changing moment for me also, because they had arrived before the ambulance. And I was kind of moved away from the scene, although I was, really trying to help so another officer carried on the chest compressions. But the thing that really horrified me, shocked me and changed my life is that when I looked around, none of his friends or the people that were helping him initially in crying was there when the police arrived, and that was a constant reminder that that life has unfortunately turned into the youths being sucked into this gang culture now, even if they were losing their friend or not, they couldn't be at the scene when the police arrived.

26:02  
That shocked me because it left me in two other people there. And the police were there. And the ambulance turned up about a minute and a half, two minutes after the police arrived.  I decided that I would kind of try and stay close to the scene. But obviously, with the police procedures, they kept on backing me away, backing me away. And I felt invested in this right now. Now. My hands were absolutely drenched with this poor guy’s blood, his blood all over my shorts and my t-shirt. And even my trainers but don't really think about things like that, while you're helping, you know.  But the scary thought is that I hoped that this guy will be alive.

26:50  
You know, when they kept on trying to resuscitate him, and this went on for about 20 minutes, I was kind of still looking at looking over. I started visualising a lot of weird shit such as you know, yeah, can't wait until I visit him in hospital and, talk about what happened or, introduce myself, get to know him and see a happy person, someone who's alive and bubbly. And I'll never forget the moment that they pulled the white sheet over his body. 

27:30
I don't think I've ever kind of…  It was like a cry from the pit of my stomach. It was a constant, no fleshy like, No, man! How the fuck did this happen? And the guy's dead, he's gone. And I didn't even know him. And I never will get to know him. 

27:50
You know, through helping someone was trying to save their life. In this case. You feel like you know them. You know, I'm constantly looking at his face and constantly looking at his eyes, medically, obviously, making sure that he's still conscious. 

28:09
Before the police arrived, I felt that we had lost him and his eyes rolled back. Parts of his face were kind of blue. He had a bit of froth around the mouth area. And but there was still that faint pulse. I kept on feeling that the police officer also felt after and obviously the ambulance crew, hence they were there for good 20 - 30 minutes after trying to keep him alive. Yeah, after he was pronounced dead and I had my kind of pit of the stomach cry. It was a great shame. 

28:53
You look at this body on the ground, which was a 22-year-old who is alive half an hour earlier, and you know that his life has ended on a fucking pavement on a road next to a block, miles from home.  And so many thoughts were flooding through my head from the fact that you know, people were asleep his family were asleep right now and going to be receiving the news of the loss.

29:27
You just look at it right there when someone's pronounced dead. You know, you looked at dead body already. The police sirens and sorry, not necessarily the sirens, the lights were just flashing lights everywhere. And then one by one. There was a CID pop up in the chief paramedic and then all of a sudden it was like it was cordoned off and there were 16 - 17 professionals on the site. You know marking up the ground and putting evidence to one side.  And I was in the middle of the shit - what was going on?

30:05
You know, I've always wondered, a lot of the times when you do see kind of a scene where, unfortunately, somebody has lost their life - why they’d be barefooted? But I'm sure that that's kind of a procedure where the ambulance needs to kind of cut through or get to certain parts of the body to, I don't know, administer medically injections, I don't know what it is, and I never will know, but all I could see was the guy's bare feet, and the rest of his body covered up with a white sheet. And I started looking at this moment and thinking to myself, this guy, was once a three-year-old toddler living a lovely life or living a life, five years old, going to school being happy, and then developing and then I started thinking about the reasons why I love coaching and helping and aspiring for teenagers and youth to keep away from this shit. And really, when I put both of them together, I think it was a, it was definitely a life that was cut short way too soon. Way too soon.

30:29
I became afraid of death, which I'd never ever been afraid of before.  And bearing in mind what had happened to me, kind of in the few months before that, this was the point where I'd taken it as - yeah, man life is, life is really short. Life is very cruel. But at the same time, it could be taken in an instant. And I from that day, I started fearing death. 

32:02
So after, after he was pronounced after the victim was pronounced dead. And I had the feeling of being numb as I explained, and others being shocked within the scene, I had, I think it's the chief paramedic, who tends to be I believe, kind of surgeon level, wearing orange, who had come over to me and providing me with what I really needed to feel that night. And in his words, they had thanked me and the other two other people that had helped within the scene for trying to keep the victim alive, and we had provided him with the best opportunity for kind of saving his life, which unfortunately didn't turn out to be.

33:03
The next side of things where I don't know how, but I get a lot of Facebook messages. And the next part was social media, which was something that I couldn't really overcome. It turns out that I had a lot of mutual friends with the victim because everybody knows everybody around that area on particularly around the block. Under speaking about him, and I, to this day, I don't know how, my name was kind of going through the circles and people maybe knowing what happened or seeing it. I was sent messages with things such as are you such a hero for this and then like, a fucking hero, man, really? A hero, saves people's lives yeah? And I started being really harsh on myself at that point. Along with the other feelings that I felt ultimately being over also being numb. I felt that I had failed I felt that I couldn't save him and I started blaming myself.  Upon reflection, that was my mental state back then. My mind state was that of you know, as I mentioned, what the fuck else, and that I had failed in saving this guy's life. And then I was getting messages and then obviously the people that always quite kind of like “what happened?” and what was going on and I just wasn't prepared to say anything or speak to anybody.

34:40
And the immediate support system that day, a lot of people gonna think I'm crazy right now. I didn't sleep. I don't sleep at all. I chose to block it all out. Instantly, that that day that morning, I just come back from a CID I've told my mom and dad everything and what was happening and wasn't able to cry. Just built-up sadness. And the only thing that we could think of, and I think I remember being my brother asking me, should we still go and see Hamza, our best friend? I was like, Yeah, fuck it, let's do it. And we actually ended up making the most of it, driving down to Brighton. And having a day on the beach, so from two o'clock in the morning, nine o'clock, that's a good eight hours later, after this, I've got a seat facing the sea, with my best mate, and my brother, we’re just relaxing. They were conscious of the fact that I don't want to talk too much about what was going on. I don't really want to talk about what was going on. But they can clearly see that I'm just not in the mind zone. So I spend a lot of time looking out and listening to the sea is actually quite good and therapeutic for me. Immediately after what had happened. And I was wanted to get away from everything. My phone’s still belling up because then people now are starting to call me the people that know me for good. And they're in my contact list, starting to call me and asked me what was going on. I sifted through the people that were kind of just wanting to know for the sake of it. And there was a couple of good friends that called me and I'd spoken to them. And I kind of spoke as if nothing was going on and nothing had happened. And I just wanted to harbour that kind of pain myself. And I don't want to reflect it I'm all good. Kind of positive. Yes. All good. And again, overall being numb.

36:45
Now look, I may come across as if like, I've been hurt by this the most. But most of my hurt and pain that I'm trying to kind of get across is that, there are people who had much more in pain, this day is always going to be much more devastating for his family. You know, this was a son, a brother, a friend, I believe he may have been an uncle too. Wherever it may be. This guy was a human, he lost his life, and through going through Facebook, social media, and Facebook in particular, started unravelling who he was, I started knowing his full name, there are pictures of him posted. And for me the most, the most I've ever looked at a picture in my life of anybody, yeah, has been at this guy. Because the more I looked at his face, the more I wanted that to be at the forefront of my mind, not his face while he was losing his life and struggling to speak and ultimately is the most horrifying thing that I've ever seen in my life and ever will. I felt that I needed, I needed to find solace in my heart, I needed to understand what was going on. And once I kind of painted a picture, the more I did that, and I felt it the more my heart was a little bit at ease about what had happened or I could use it as a landmark in my life to either change my life or provide people with inspiration to not end up in that situation, hence, with things like football coaching has been elevated even more after this. When I see a kid that potentially on the block, I've seen grow up and then he's potentially getting to the point where he wants to join those gangs or get into it or sell drugs or be shifty and stuff, I've always been that guy, even my coaching uniform when I come back, my coaching gear. I've always said some you keep an eye out trouble if there's anything you want to talk about, just give us a shout that, you're good lad, you're good girl, just keep your head, screwed on and, finish college, things that they won't hear from many other people, especially strangers, but they're not really strangers because they see my face around quite a lot. 

39:07
And so I set out on a voyage, basically to not just make myself feel better, but help out even after what just happened. I really, really felt it important to, to meet the guy's family, which I knew that through the investigation was hard to do. They actually passed on my details, as requested by me to the family. And if I was able, legally, to speak to them more. Just all I wanted to say to them was that I did the best I could. Literally, that's all I wanted to tell them at that point. Just I did he didn't you know he didn't die. He didn't die alone. I comforted him, and just let them know that I mean, that there’s possibly nothing that I could ever say to them. That would bring the kid back, child back their young man back, their love back and abolish their loss. There's nothing I could do to change it, basically. But I needed to let them know that, that he didn't die alone. And we did everything we could. And if there is anything I could ever do for them, I'm always there for them. I just needed to do that. 

40:25
So there's an opportunity where I kept tabs, and I kept on actually asking there was one officer, in particular, was quite open with his contact, and I'd asked him about, funeral or any anything else, but his sister had actually reached out to me, which, surprised me. Usually, I'm not the kind of person to not know what to say. But I actually sat on her text for like, two days, I just didn't know what to say, I couldn't find the words. But her message was quite beautiful to me. She had been told who I was what I tried to do. And she had said, look, everything happens for a reason, and we will meet you eventually, I just replied to her and expressed my deepest condolences and letting them know that I'm at their disposal, anything you need anything, ever. I'm there for you. You know, I just felt like I just needed to be there for the family, even though I didn't know who they were. 

41:34
So she told me the details of the funeral, and I chose to go to the funeral. Fast-forwarding after the funeral. And after that feeling of solace, of meeting his father, and his father, giving me a hug, and his brothers speaking to me and me, also hugging them and extending my condolences and my feelings towards what happened. Eventually, and fast forward kind of eight months or so, eight months to a year, I believe it was, I found myself in the Old Bailey, giving the same statements in front of a packed courtroom with a jury. And for me, I, I was only there, obviously, I didn't see what had happened. But I gave my, my series of events, and presented that to the jury, which now I'd hoped again, would help the investigation and help ultimate justice for this victim. And the reason why I mentioned the Old Bailey, because it's the most historic and most famous in the biggest court, in the UK, and it represents the UK justice system, seen it on TV, and it's just, it's not a place that you would think you'd see in life. And the reason why I mentioned this being such a significant point in my life, and this through this ordeal, and how it affected me personally, is that I was thankful for the judge who dismissed the jury and then asked me to stay where I was, which worried me at first I was like, what's going on here. And after the jury had been excused from the courtroom, he turned to me and in as many words look, thanked me and appreciated, the selflessness of my act, even though I may not, kind of answer back to a judge, but I didn't feel that still, I didn't feel that. And it was just a few sentences that he had mentioned saying, no matter what happened, if we had more people thinking like you're being like you in society, then it will be a much better place. And ultimately, again, I had an opportunity to met his family after and I met his mum for the first time at that point as well. So after embrace, like hugs and again, reassuring them that there's anything they need, you let me know, and the words of the judge, for me, I felt, finally that I could quite possibly close the chapter of feeling numb, to then using it as something that I can move forward with my life, make me stronger, and make sure as much as possible I can do what I can in society to ensure that no other kid gets to that stage where he's kind of killed in cold blood, for no reason basically.

45:11
Look, after all is said and done and me explaining what had happened, I'm very conscious that, many people have gone through pain, much more pain than I have just explained that I've been through. They've been directly affected by knife crime, gun crime, this gang culture. But it's not every day that somebody dies in your arms. And my heart goes out to everybody that's gone through this or been affected directly or indirectly in lost friends family, through knife crime, but I hope through speaking about, these, my feelings and what had happened to me through this, and what other people have been through after events such as these - tragic events, I hope that makes it easier for people to understand or get through just how much pain can be inflicted on victims of these horrific crimes, not just the victim, the victim's family, the victim's friends, the effect it has on society, the immediate neighbourhood, wider society, ultimately, across the country. This one action can have a ripple effect on so many different avenues of the issues that we do face. There have been examples, most recently in life that have shown me that, I wish that we lived in a more altruistic society, people willing to help, as opposed to being that bystander and fucking more recently, people pulling out their phones and recording to capture it, to get that recognition that it's their video or someone to see something horrible. Yeah, I mean, we can never run away from that, but don’t you think that if we, if we will put our phones fucking down and tried to help, maybe we wouldn’t have as many losses as we’ve had?

47:15
Away from that, I've always felt that helping people is something I've never thought about before, or you don't think about these things. It just happens. But then when I look back at it, and I analyse situations I've been in - I still don't understand why I move quickly as I do in a situation before most people have even thought about what's going on. I don't know I mean, in the past of is because I've maybe never thought about my own safety and I've thought about other people first? It could be the case that, I heard this statistic about six years ago, and it was if a Londoner saw injustice or something going wrong immediately around them, one in 10 would stand up. One in 10 will stand up to fight that injustice or help. That's crazy! You know, if there's anything that we can do in society to be more active, or be more aware of situations, and I'm not saying get yourself into danger, in order to help somebody because that may end up being another tragedy. And you have heard of stories where there are people being selfless through terrorist attacks, or through injustices on the streets and people stent stood up, and you know, so standing up for people who are victims in situations, I don't know if it's part of people's nature, or their makeup or how they've kind of been brought up or being a product of their environment. I am very grateful that I have that instinct in me and I don't think I'll ever change, however, I have been more cautious with the fact that you know, it could end up going the other way for me. Do I care? If it saves somebody else, then so be it and I believe that you know, everything happens for a reason - everything's written. So if it's my time, it's my time. just so happens that hasn't been my time and I will continue helping people if they are in some danger. 

49:32
My advice to anybody that gets caught up in a situation like this, like this or finds himself in an unfortunate tragedy, is to seek help to keep seek counselling to speak to people I know it will be very tough, and I still find elements of what happened very tough to discuss. But the more I do speak about it and the more I face my own feelings about the tragedy of that night, the more it became real, and the more I can kind of possibly be a comfort to other people that have been through it themselves. 

50:17
So, again, speaking about what happened, in all situations in life, is possibly the first step to recovery is accepting what happened and moving forward with your life. I'm that much more conscious and passionate about making sure that nobody else ends up in that situation. And when it comes to coaching, children, kids, teens, I do see a lot of the victim in each one of these people that I aim to inspire. So I do have a, a deeper end goal of helping them and seeing how significant I can be within their personal development. And obviously, through that, the channel of football is my outlet, and I always have in the back of my mind that, through my passion and love for football, and teaching through football, it can be reflected upon these kids and these youths to ensure that they don't ever get anywhere near that kind of situation where their life could be cut short.  

51:31
Most of the youth today is fuelled by social media and, and what they have to be in what they must be what they've got what they're wearing. You know, we always used to have that rap culture back then, but looking back, it was like, it's kind of, it's like, quite beautiful, it's like, kind of togetherness - yeah, we had our beef, and we had our arguments, and some kids come over from another area, but the thing is, we'd fight fisticuffs, there was some kind of tools used here and there. And now I'm not talking about tools that are going to kill people we're talking about, bruise up another man. Yeah, cool, whatever. But then, it always turned into or ended up being, being friends after that. It's really weird. But now, youth could stab someone, not knowing that they can kill someone. So it's like a norm, it feels like they're conditioned to either have a knife or a gun. I mean, we all know that you know, even possession of a knife can carry up to like five years imprisonment, sorry, a gun, five years in prison with a knife, you're looking at one to two years, at least, you don't walk around with these things, keep them in the kitchens don't even wait. My advice to anyone who knows anybody with a gun is to stay as far away as possible from that person, and if anybody ever tells you to hold a gun, for you don't even think about that, because you've lost your life. Now, when it comes to knives, on the other hand, it's the same thing, don't ever carry a knife in the street, you don't even need to do that. So look - my advice if there's beef going on, if there's something that needs to be resolved, a good old fisticuff could be the way. Yeah, fine. But then even understanding and maybe channel your aggressions through music, but in the, in a positive way, because I see a lot of the music culture now not really directed at killing each other. If people understand the music that they listen to, even though it's an art form, they're actually there's a wider message of being together, you're in it together. And I think the more than you're in it together and you're understanding each other, the more that society can come together, and there'll be less youth crime.  

53:48
Don’t limit it to just like music. There are so many different art forms as well. There are sports, there's football, which I obviously have talked about a lot. There are individual sports that you know, that provide that discipline and provide a getaway and a life away from real life. There are so many opportunities for people to become active and keep away from whatever's happened. I'm even reaching out to people who are in gangs right now and if you ever listen to this, and you need to make a decision to get out of this and inspire other people to get out of it because obviously, the real bad man is the one who can avoid situations like that. Talk themselves out of situations like that, and really get on with life, inspiring people and not ending up killing people. Now, they'll always be people that, feel hard done by oppressed or they're not having a good time or they haven't they face hardship in their lives. And that will constitute you know, aggression and anger and just having a channel of you know, wanting to inflict maybe on other people. But if you want to be aggressive and angry, be intellectually angry and aggressive. You know, be an activist for really good cause 

55:17
The message also reaches out to, government entities and schools, colleges, universities, as you know, push and fund extracurricular activities for these for the youth. Because I believe that this actually is fuelled by the fact that these kids don't have anything to do, or at least they think they don't have anything to do. Yeah, a lot of the times, it costs to go and partake in boxing sessions or football sessions or things like that. However, we have so many parks where you can go and kick a ball about with your mates, get involved in networks and circles, and there are people and entities that can help you get into this active life, as opposed to dragging yourselves down a path where you believe blindly, you're the bad man, and you're making money and that's it. Because even with all of that, it will end up badly. Tell me about one drug dealer, tell me about one gangster, tell me about one person who's holding a knife or a gun around the streets that it’s actually ended up brilliant for, yeah? That'll never happen. Vicious cycle. 

56:23
So bearing in mind, everything that I've spoken about, and my experiences in the lead up to the events of that night. With the mindset, and what I've learned out of this, good has come out of it for me, I've been fortunate enough, even though my mum battling cancer, and she's on the road to a full recovery, after a full liver transplant. Yeah, you have to be fortunate enough to have these good things happen to you. I felt that I needed a good card dealt in my life. I'm taking everything that I've learned to improve my life, change my life, really go after what I believe in and being passionate about. The kind of thing that makes me want to wake up and live this life, with passion and to the best. And I've always had that feeling a lot of the times that a lot of people feel where, life is just moving by, and a lot of people moving by and moving forward and successful, but you're just like stuck in a rut and you just don't know how to move ahead. That's natural for everyone. Everyone works on their own timeline. And as long as you do what you need to do each day, to not just survive, but make a better version of you when you wake up the following day. Then fuck anyone’s timeline, you'll get there in the end. 

57:50
And you will end up finding what you're passionate about in life and along the way, inspiring others that's the most important thing. We come into this world with nothing. We leave with, materially, nothing. But one thing that we can leave is a legacy and inspiration and knowing that if you’ve you know touched and affected people in a positive way, then take me to heaven basically.

58:18
So let's not be afraid of life. Let's be very passionate about living.

Matt   58:28
Thank you for listening to Prelude. If you’ve enjoyed this episode please support us by leaving a review, subscribing to the show or following us on social media, and we hope you’ll join us again soon for the next episode of the prelude podcast.