A mother has spoken of her pain after her son was fatally stabbed in the heart by a man who moments later boasted: “I pierced him four times bro”.
Speaking for the first time since her son Jamie was knifed four times as he walked home from a friend’s birthday party, Dawn Gray, 49, has opened her heart in a bid to deter young people from carrying knives.
Her son was 19 and just 5ft 4ins tall with a “baby face” when he was knifed in the street by Daniel Parr who subsequently “bragged” to his friends about what he had done.
After attacking Jamie, Parr texted his pal the sickening message: “I pierced him four times bro.”
As Jamie lay in the street dying, he went round to a woman’s house and showed her the blood-stained knife he had used to kill Jamie.
While in custody having been arrested for Jamie’s murder, he sent her the threatening message: “Snitches get stitches”.
“It was brazen,” Mrs Gray, of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, said in her first full interview since her son was killed in 2011. “He’s evil.”
She told how her son, a trainee bricklayer, was stabbed four times in his legs and chest in Sheffield in 2011.
He was walking home, having been out celebrating a friend’s 21st birthday.
“The knife blade had pierced his breastbone and plunged into his heart,” she said. “Then he was left to die in the street.
“A passer-by phoned 999 but it was already too late. Mum had to identify Jamie’s body. I couldn’t bear to do it.
“I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt Jamie. He was so gentle.”
She told how a few hours after Jamie was murdered she started receiving messages – all naming Parr as the perpetrator.
“They said Jamie left the pub early,” she recalled. “They told me he’d been attacked as he walked home alone.
“And they were all naming the same man as my son’s killer.”
Mrs Gray, who is no longer with Jamie’s father, David, said she had never heard of Parr.
“But I couldn’t believe it when I heard he’d been bragging about slaughtering my son,” she said. “I vowed I’d get that monster off the street.
“I had so many questions about what happened to Jamie that awful night.”
But it was not a quick process. A first trial, in January 2012, ended without a verdict.
In October 2013 the family were in Sheffield Crown Court for a re-trial.
The court heard Parr and his cousin, Connor Jessop, had approached my boy as he walked home.
Connor vaguely knew Jamie. According to Parr, the two of them had fallen out that day.
His mother continued: “I didn’t really believe that, but it was just the start.
“Parr claimed his cousin originally had the knife and was planning to stab a car tyre.
“He said he’d taken it from Connor and put it in his own pocket. He said he didn’t want to stab my son, but panicked.
“He claimed he didn’t know Jamie was stabbed in the chest and he didn’t call an ambulance because he didn’t realise he was badly hurt. It was all lies.
“Shockingly, he’d made calls from jail, threatening witnesses.
“He said, ‘Once I get out, they won’t be opening their mouths. There’s going to be a war starting.’
“He’d threatened to ‘do in’ the poor young woman whose house he’d gone to after the murder. His pal smashed her windows to terrify her.”
In October 2013 Parr, then 21, of Rotherham, was jailed for 23 years having been convicted of murder and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. This was reduced on appeal to 20 years.
“Now I am continuing with my life,” Mrs Gray said. “I’ll never understand why he was taken from us. My life has been torn APART ."
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