When Zoe Cooke’s son was killed in July 2021, she decided to do something that would make him proud and has worked tirelessly to campaign for more bleed kits to be available
It was the call that every parent dreads. On a hot summer’s day in 2021, Zoe Cooke’s life changed forever. She was prepping Sunday dinner and awaiting the arrival of her 22-year-old son, Byron Griffin, who lived just around the corner, when she received the news that he’d been stabbed.
“Byron was really outgoing,” Zoe, 51, says. “He was always making people laugh and he played the joker. But with me he was very much a mummy’s boy. He would tell me anything. His friends used to always laugh and say, ‘I can’t believe you’ve told your mum that. Why would you tell your mum that?’ He’d reply, ‘She’s my best friend. I tell her everything.’ We had a really, really close bond.”
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“One of his sisters was six years older than him, but he was very protective of her. If she got a boyfriend, he was like, ‘Who’s that?’ And his little sister, well, he absolutely adored her. He’d come to my house and my daughter and her friends would all dive on him and he’d play with them. He loved them both to pieces.”
The darkest day
Byron was stabbed in Eyre’s Garden in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. “I can remember it as if it was yesterday,” says Zoe. “When I think of knife crime, I think of it as being a dark, dingy day, but it was nothing like that. It was the day after England had been playing in the football and it was red-hot. I was sitting in my living room and I’d just put the dinner on because it was a Sunday.
“Byron rang me and explained he and another mate were going to pick a friend up and take them home. Then he asked if he could come over for dinner afterwards. I said of course he could and he replied, ‘Alright Mum, I love you.’ I said, ‘Love you too, darling. See you in a bit.’ And he put the phone down.”
Later that day, Zoe received another phone call – this time from a partner of one of Byron’s friends. As she clicked through to answer, she heard a voice screaming, “Byron’s been stabbed – he’s been stabbed!”
Thinking back to how she’d not long ago spoken to her son, Zoe was in disbelief until she was told to head to the hospital as soon as possible.
“I ran out of my house, jumped in my car and went to the Queen’s Medical Centre,” she says. “When I got there, I was hysterical, saying, ‘Where’s my son?’”
Zoe was soon informed that Byron was making his way via air ambulance. “My heart shattered,” she says. “I felt the colour drain from me. I couldn’t understand what they meant or what was happening. A few minutes later, I was taken into the relative’s room, but I was really hot and I felt like I couldn’t breathe so I came back out.
“The ambulance pulled up and a doctor got out – he was saturated in blood. My son was then brought out and his eyes were rolled to the back of his head and he was cut open. They gave him open heart surgery on the scene and I could see everything. They whizzed him past me. I couldn’t even touch him and I collapsed on the floor. My friend screamed, ‘If he’s alive, it’s a miracle.’ The nurses told me he was really poorly, but I kept saying, ‘He’s my only son, you can’t let him die. That boy is my life, you cannot let my son die.’”
Nothing but numbness
Byron, who had been stabbed twice – in the arm and the chest – died in hospital. “When I think back, it was like I wasn’t even there,” says Zoe. “It was like watching a movie. All I can remember is going to my mum’s and us all sitting there in silence. In the days after his death I just kept asking people, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t hear anything. I wasn’t eating. All I did was drink tea for days.
“I was numb – that’s the only way to describe it. I had to identify him and when I saw him I hugged him and I cried, but I was still in a state of shock because it was only around four days later.”
In 2022, four men were found guilty of Byron’s murder following a six-week trial at Derby Crown Court and were sentenced to life in prison.
Since Byron’s death, Zoe has campaigned for more bleed kits to be available to allow members of the public to carry out first aid while waiting for medical assistance. In 2023, she won the Pride Of Britain regional fundraiser award for the East Midlands after fundraising for more than 100 bleed kits.
“I was searching the internet and thinking, ‘What could I have done as Mum? What could I have done differently? What could have saved him?’” says Zoe. “I came across the bleed kits and that’s when I thought, ‘I can’t let him have died in vain,’ which is when I started raising money for them in Nottingham.
“I now work with kids and tell them about what I’ve been through. When they’ve seen it from that perspective and they get to know somebody who’s been through it, they look at it differently. It’s why I thought Adolescence on Netflix was good because it showed it from a new perspective.”
As Zoe mentions, since its release in March, Adolescence, a four-part drama which centres on a 13-year-old boy who is charged over the killing of a female classmate, has shone a light on knife crime on a global scale.
Having built a legacy around knife crime prevention, Zoe hopes her son would be proud of all she has achieved. “He used to hate seeing me cry,” she says. “If he’s looking down on me, I want him to think, ‘That’s my mum.’ I want him to be proud.
“I don’t want the killers to think they’ve won either. They’ve already ruined my life, but I’ve got to make something good come out of my son’s death because if he’s died for nothing and it’s in vain, they’ve killed so much more. I can’t save the world, but if I can change the way a few kids think then I’ve done something for him – that’s all I can do.”