Tomorrow David Webber will watch his 17-year-old son Charlie play cricket in a match at Nottingham University in memory of his brother Barney who was senselessly killed there two years ago at the age of 19.
Charlie will wear his ‘brilliant, sporty’ older brother’s number 53 shirt.
Barney’s mother Emma, who crusades relentlessly to find justice for him and dulls her pain with medication on particularly ‘difficult days’, says ‘sadly, it’s too much for me’ to be there, too.
By rights, David and Emma should be proudly anticipating their dearly loved eldest son’s graduation from this university next month. But, as David says, ‘Barney will never take his degree in history, never have his 21st birthday, never grow into the man he was becoming.’
Instead, he says, ‘Barney is trapped at 19 for ever and left there while everyone else is moving on’, following his vicious stabbing in the early hours of the morning on June 13, 2023, as he and close friend Grace O’Malley-Kumar walked back to the halls after a night out.
