Mother of murdered Bristol teenager calls for better knife crime education
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Leanne Ekland, whose son Max Dixon was stabbed to death in January, says killers ‘have taken my heart’. The mother of a boy stabbed to death alongside his best friend in a case of mistaken identity in Bristol has said the teenage killers have “taken my heart”. She called for extra education in schools about knives and for families to do more to keep tabs on their children.
Leanne Ekland, the mother of Max Dixon, 16, who was murdered in Bristol in January, described how she thought her son was tucked up in bed when the stabbing happened and dashed to his side as he lay fatally wounded on the street. She said: “It was such a panic. I was sat down on the floor, and the paramedics were cutting his clothes, and I just kept thinking: ‘He’s going to be so annoyed with you because you’re cutting his coat off.’ It was his Christmas coat. I just needed to make sure Max knew I was there with him. He knew I was there.”.
Of the killers, Ekland said: “They’ve taken my heart. Everyone says it will get better. But I don’t think it will and I don’t want to move on. He completed our family. He was the glue. I think they [the killers] need to understand that they destroyed me.”.
Max was killed with his friend 15-year-old Mason Rist after being chased and stabbed by four teenagers in Knowle West. The two boys had been wrongly identified as being responsible for bricks being thrown at a house in a rival area, Hartcliffe. Their attackers were armed with machetes and a sword.
On Thursday their attackers – Riley Tolliver, 18, Kodishai Wescott, 17, and two boys of 15 and 16 who cannot be named because of their age – were sentenced at Bristol crown court. A getaway driver, 45-year-old Antony Snook, was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 38 years last month.
