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'You can see where the knife went in': Mum 'can't bring herself to wash son's bloody clothes' 3 years on from murder
29 January 2025, 19:10 | Updated: 29 January 2025, 19:12
A mother whose son was stabbed to death says she still can’t bear to go through his blood-stained clothes three years on from his murder.
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On January 29 2022, 20-year-old Ryan Theobald and Janis Kozlovskis, who was 17, were attacked on a night out in Doncaster. An argument between the pair and Amrit Jhagra, who was 19 at the time, had escalated.
Jhagra stabbed Ryan and Janis outside a nightclub, where they died. There are still floral tributes attached to a tree on the street where the attack happened.
“His last words were ‘Bye. I love you,’” Ryan’s mum, Lisa, said.
“The next morning I got the knock on the door. I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just a vicious attack. It’s torture for me every day. I’ve not processed it yet and three years on I’m still in therapy.
“Ryan was a lovely lad, he used to help people, he was my main carer. I’ve still got his clothes from the night. I can’t wash them, it’s just too hard. I’ve only been able to take a hoodie out of the evidence bag. It was full of blood, you could see where the knife entered. It was blue but now it’s like a brown colour, like cardboard. I can’t look at any others, that was enough for me.”
Read more: 14 year-old charged with 12 year-old boy's murder in Birmingham due for murder trial
Jhagra was jailed for life for Ryan and Janis’ murders in 2022, with a minimum of 26 years.
Lisa is calling on the government to make it more difficult for young people to get hold of knives, “They’re still being bought online for cheap, people are saying that. Something needs to be done. We need more searches on the streets as well. We don’t see enough police on the streets.”
Detective Thomas Ryan of South Yorkshire Police, who worked on this case, and other similar murder investigations, said there was "a conveyor belt of young men stabbing to death other young men.
“We practically have a file waiting for these incidents, and we just change the names and that’s the tragic situation that we and the whole country are in.”
Detective Ryan has been working closely on a new campaign, ‘Knives Take Lives’, in which he’s put together experiences from cases he’s worked on to tell the story of the consequences of knife crime.
It’s mainly aimed at 11 to 14 year olds.
“I’m not telling them not to stab someone because I don’t think they’d listen to me if I did.” Detective Ryan added,
“What I’m trying to get across is that if they stab someone, at that very moment they’re also hurting themselves. I’ve worked on five of these murder cases and in all of those, the person responsible was intent on hurting the other person. It didn’t occur to them, what would happen to themselves.
“They’re all now serving sentences of 18, 19, 20 years.”
South Yorkshire Police said they’re the fourth highest region in the country for knife crime offences, per 100,000 people.
For Lisa, she hopes that by being part of this campaign, and sharing Ryan’s story, they can save at least one person.
“I’m really fed up of hearing kids hearing ‘I carry a knife to protect myself.’ If you carry a knife, you’re going to use it. You’re going to end up dead, or locked up, so don’t carry one.
“If I can save one life, then that means something to me, so I’ll carry on doing what I’m doing.”
