Original subtitles

SIREN BLARES

Just imagine having your child murdered.

I had to place my hand on Charlie's aorta, where he had been wounded.

I put my head back on his chest,

and that's when I realised that his heart was no longer beating.

And you can see three stab wounds clearly on there.

This was murder.

17-year-old victim, 16-year-old attacker.

He killed our son, but he's...

If you don't know who Charlie Cosser is,

he's a 17-year-old boy who lost his life...

What's unique is you've got a dad processing his grief and anger

moment by moment on TikTok.

# You are there... #

Charismatic, funny, caring.

Just a beautiful son in every way, Charlie was.

Charlie was an exceptionally talented footballer.

Every time he got the ball,

you would assume something would come of it.

Before we switched off Charlie's life support machine,

I made the most important promise of my life...

Not yet.

..I would spend the rest of my life educating people

about the dangers and the measurable impacts of knife crime.

OK? Yeah.

Woohoo!

The teenager who was stabbed at a party

in a West Sussex village over the weekend has been named.

Charlie Cosser was just 17 years old.

Charlie's been in hospital about five hours,

and I'm there with my family,

and I just feel like I need to get out.

I pull my phone out, and I start recording.

We love you so much, and we're not gonna leave you, Charlie,

we're not gonna leave you at all.

You've had lots of bad injuries, but you're fighting really strong.

It's my way of talking to him.

As well as talking to him by his bed,

I'm talking to him into a screen, but it's also helping me.

Here we are, Charlie, just come down to the sea.

It's really peaceful out here.

That's where you are, in hospital on the 7th floor,

but this is Brighton.

You can see the pier over there that comes out.

Because everyone loves you,

and I want you to be able to watch this video yourself.

I'm James Dunham, I'm an ITV reporter,

and I covered this story.

Before any of this happened,

Charlie's family barely had a presence on social media,

but as soon as Martin started sharing his grief,

he became a TikTok sensation.

Martin's reactions were so raw, so visceral,

that it all felt like we were sharing in his grief

and we were on this journey with him.

Knife crime, this is what it does,

this is what it does - destroys families.

Constant impact, constantly feeling that sadness

and that loss of Charlie with every breath I take

and we take as a family.

My name's Charley Bourne, I am a podcaster and content creator.

My degree's in psychology,

and I've always been fascinated by true crime,

and I started posting on TikTok about three years ago.

I think the reason that Martin's videos were going so viral

was it was so evident that this was just an everyday, normal family.

This could've been any one of us.

Thank you for your messages of support.

So, Charlie was born in Guildford on the 28th of October 2005.

That's a nice one of you two, I like that.

That's at your grandma's house. Yeah.

Every picture of Charlie...

He's smiling. ..is cheeky.

Look how he'd always lean his head to the side.

Cheeky smile, he did. He was such a cheeky boy.

Within three months, I'd named my little boy Cheeks

because he had just the cheekiest little grin.

Alan! Alan!

Charlie was a very typical teenage brother

in the sense that we would fight and argue

over stupid, trivial things like food and my AirPods.

Give me the hat. No.

But he was really caring and always looked out for me.

Charlie.

Come in my room whenever he pleased, even if I didn't want him to.

To ask for money.

Me being older, he knew a way to push my buttons.

Look at this of Adam and Charlie. The big brother.

He's got his Chelsea shirt on, Ads.

He could always get a reaction from me,

but I could never get one back from him.

Adam. Look at Adam with him.

Charlie was an exceptionally talented footballer.

Me and my dad had a lot of passion for football,

but Charlie had the natural ability.

Oh-ha-ha!

Well, I first met Charlie when... it was during lockdown.

I was in quite a low point before I met Charlie.

I was always struggling in and out of school since childhood,

so didn't have really many friends,

and if I did, I normally ruined the friendships.

But I met Charlie, and he just gave me all the confidence I needed.

I started playing football in school cos he actually said

I was actually all right and had a bit of potential.

I just thought of him as a very good footballer.

There was just, like, a night-and-day difference

between him and different kids.

Every time he got the ball,

you would assume something would come of it.

And again. And again. Yes, Charlie.

He managed to get into the Brentford Academy,

which as a family, we're so proud of him for being able to achieve that.

So, Charlie had left school, got his GCSEs.

Charlie then managed to get this apprenticeship

at Charter House School.

As a grounds person,

horticultural type of apprenticeship, my goodness me,

Charter House for grounds and a place to work - incredible.

So, Charlie was really happy, happy at Charter House.

I'm Rebecca Grady,

I'm a reporter for LBC Radio, and I covered the story.

As the summer began, everything for Charlie was looking really positive.

And he was excited about what he was gonna do next.

But everything was about to change.

Just beyond these trees is a field,

and the sons of the then-owners of the farmhouse just over there

decided to hold an end-of-summer-term party.

There were going to be marquees to cover the DJ.

My name is Fin Bowles.

I was a DJ on the night of the party.

And this party was one of the first opportunities I'd got

to be a DJ, really.

Quite a well put together for an 18 to 20-year-old arranged party.

It was supposed to be over-18s only.

Charlie, who was 17, heard about it and decided he wanted to go.

The night started with me arriving

a little bit earlier than everyone else.

At least 100 teenagers and young people turned up

from the surrounding towns and villages.

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

And as the numbers grew, it was like,

"Wow, this is gonna be something quite fun and exciting."

Everyone sort of really got into the night

and enjoying themselves.

It was like a club night.

Fin, who was the DJ, captured what was going on

and filmed himself on his mobile phone.

One lad did agree to be security, but a knife was brought in,

there was lots of alcohol at a party

where there were a large number of under-18s.

And then as the night went on, you saw people getting aggie.

And whether it was the alcohol in people's systems,

cos there were drinks there,

a lot of people were getting quite anxious.

And then I spot Charlie,

and he was in some sort of discomfort,

and he was sort of, like, crawling out of the tent.

Then, suddenly, it was a case

of someone coming over to the microphone and saying,

"Someone's been stabbed."

SCREAMING

Calls went out to emergency services,

and the police were first to arrive, including an armed response vehicle.

Police found Charlie very weak

but able to give details of his name and his parents.

My name's Monique Smith, I'm an ambulance practitioner

for Platinum Ambulance Service, and I was there on the night.

There was lots police officers.

I believe they may have been questioning party-goers.

And the mood had gone from happy

to everyone running away crying, screaming, upset.

My name's Lee Carr,

I'm a paramedic for South East Coast Ambulance Service.

When I got to Charlie, there were a lot of people around,

so it was quite obvious that Charlie had been critically injured.

My colleague had begun to assess him.

He was able to answer questions relating to pain.

They were small wounds, but they had a big impact,

and I could tell that just by the colour of his skin.

He was very... ash-kinda-looking colour, very grey, pale.

He's beyond point of pain now because he's lost so much blood.

Our priority at that point was to begin stabilising Charlie

and then working out a way of extricating Charlie

from the fields up to the waiting ambulance.

In an incident like this where life is in the balance,

it's really important

to get the family to the victim as soon as possible.

I was lying in my bed,

and then I woke up to the sound of the door

being banged on really, really hard.

Bang, bang, bang, bang! "Martin, Martin."

"No, I know, Tara, I know, it's the door, the door's gone."

Why's the door being banged? My head starts racing.

I instantly jumped out my bed.

Tara's at the top of the stairs

with Eloise, my 15-year-old daughter.

Opened the door, there's two police officers.

Oh, God. "Are you Martin?" My God, they know my name.

"Yes, I'm Martin."

"Your son Charlie, he's been stabbed, he's critical."

The police officer tells us that he will be driving us

to the hospital where they're taking Charlie,

so I grabbed some contact lenses, my shoes, a charger and my phone.

I don't have time to put my shoes on,

just ran out into the rain and darkness into the police car.

So, the journey to the nearest major trauma unit

is quite a journey, probably over 30 minutes on blue lights.

SIREN BLARES

We're in the car, my dad is, like, gagging out the window,

and my mum's crying and holding onto my dad across my lap.

"He's gonna be all right."

And I remember my phone going off, and it was Mum, and she said,

"You need to get to the Royal Sussex in Brighton."

Five minutes into the journey, and everything just came to a halt,

and we had to pull over.

Charlie had gone into cardiac arrest.

RADIO CHATTER

We heard things coming over on the radio

that they were working on Charlie in the ambulance.

'I need two units of A negative...'

The police car containing the family on the way to the hospital

was diverted to meet up with the ambulance containing Charlie.

'Some direct contact needed for this one, over.'

We had to open his chest up on the roadside,

and everyone had to be involved.

When they arrived at the ambulance,

the family were desperate to get out to see Charlie.

But an officer asked them to wait in the car while he just went to check.

The police officers held Charlie's ribs up,

and under the guidance of the HEMS doctor,

I had to place my hand on Charlie's aorta, where he had been wounded.

The officer, having seen the condition Charlie was in,

returned to the car and asked the family to remain there.

And the police had locked us in the car, they wouldn't let us out,

and I'm like, "I wanna see Charlie." "No, you've got to stay in here."

Whatever state he's in, I just want to see my little boy.

Once we'd got Charlie's heart beating again,

we loaded Charlie back onto the ambulance.

It was quite a nerve-wracking journey to hospital.

At any moment, Charlie could've gone back into cardiac arrest.

It was just, I... I guess almost a dream-like, you know.

I'm shaking, gripping onto my mum's hand,

and we make our way into the hospital.

And we're taken into a very small room.

I remember... parking up at the hospital,

and I remember Dad turning to us and just...

we were just holding hands,

walking to find where Charlie was in intensive care,

and what we were greeted with, no-one should have to see -

no parent, no brother, no sister.

We just need you to get better, Charlie,

but you're fighting really strong.

There's people with you all the time who are treating you

and looking after you and loving you.

Charlie's just been taken in to the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

It's been a horrendous, horrendous number of hours.

So, Charlie had tubes coming out from him from head to toe.

And he had no blood.

You could see the blood at the end of his bed

from all the transfusions he had to have.

And we weren't... weren't expecting Charlie to be in that state.

I am very nervous to hold his hand

cos I don't wanna hurt him any further,

but I quickly am reassured that I can't hurt him any more

just by holding his hand, so I held his hand tightly.

I also gripped his pinkie cos that's something that we did.

The nurses, the doctors,

I just remember them being so gentle with him, so tentative.

We're all here, and we're praying for you.

You've just gotta get better, mate, because...

..this just shouldn't be happening to you.

All the hope and dreams

and aspirations Charlie has had in his life and we've had for him...

..kind-hearted, charismatic, funny, caring,

just a beautiful son in every way, Charlie was.

He's grown up in Milford, which is a lovely area, it's very rural.

It's just a small, quaint little village.

And I've never not felt safe in Milford.

It's 45 minutes between London and the coast down in Portsmouth.

It's a lovely place to bring up our little boy in.

You just don't hear of things like this happening

in a little place like Milford.

I'm Alan Gardner KC, prosecution barrister in this case.

I think the initial challenge for the police

when they arrived on the scene

was the confusion about what had happened.

It was chaos. People all over the place.

It needed containing really quickly,

and there was an urgency to get hold of the offender.

At first light, a detailed search was carried out of the area.

There was very little forensic evidence in this case.

The knife was never found, but there were loads of potential witnesses.

So, initially, some of the witnesses were reluctant

to engage with the police.

Some were able to name two potential offenders.

Two boys who'd arrived at the party together were being mentioned.

One of those was Yura Varybrus. He was 16 years old.

Yura went to the same secondary school as me, at The Weald.

And he was in the year below me, so he was a year younger.

I can see how people saw him as an intimidating person.

He goes to the gym, and he was a lot bigger than the other kids.

You kind of saw him as quite a dominant character.

No-one would really approach him, really.

We learned during the trial that Yura had a difficult upbringing,

but he also had a reputation for being aggressive

to those who tried to stand up to him,

which might explain why some of the witnesses were reluctant

to speak to officers.

Police went to several addresses connected to Yura,

but they were unable to find him.

It turned out that he had gone to a Toby Carvery in Crawley

for what would have been his final meal.

He was there with his step-father and his mother.

When we found out that Yura had gone for a Toby Carvery meal

when Charlie was fighting for his life in hospital.

That was, like, quite literally disgusting to all of us.

Around lunchtime that day, Yura's mother called the police

and said she was gonna bring her son in.

When she arrived here to Horsham Police Station,

officers came out and arrested Yura

for the attempted murder of Charlie Cosser.

So, we're there just in hospital at least two and a half days,

just praying that everything is gonna be all right.

They were gonna take him for a brain scan.

The consultant, he came and said

that the brain scan had shown fluid on Charlie's brain

and that they would have to drain that fluid.

He might not survive that surgery.

That was when I thought, "Charlie's not gonna make this."

They said it just confirmed,

and that we were gonna have to switch his life support machine off.

The consultant sits down with us

and tells us that we need to prepare to say our goodbyes to Charlie.

And I remember us all standing round the hospital bed.

My dad and me one side,

and my sister and Mum the other side,

and then it was time...

..to say... to say goodbye to Charlie.

They turned off his life support machine.

I can't even really describe how it feels

to basically watch your brother die.

I put my head on his chest,

and I was listening to his heartbeat for the last time, basically.

I looked up at his face,

and I could see, like, the colour draining from his face,

and he just became even more pale than he was before.

And then I was being told that I needed to potentially step back

because I'm in such a state, crying hysterically,

but I'm refusing because I don't wanna leave Charlie's side

in his last moments so I... I put my head back on his chest,

and that's when I realised that his heart was no longer beating.

I just held Charlie's hand, and I just made him a promise,

and it was the most important promise of my life,

so I promised him justice,

but the main promise that I made Charlie

was that I would spend the rest of my life

educating people about the dangers

and the measurable impacts of knife crime.

I felt so isolated and alone in the immediate aftermath,

and I just recorded into the phone.

It's nine o'clock, the day after Charlie has died.

Eloise last night just screamed for about half an hour as we got home.

Once Martin started posting his videos on TikTok,

he soon gained a lot of attention,

but because police had arrested their prime suspect quite quickly,

there wasn't the usual TikTok speculation

about who the killer might be or where they might be hiding,

but instead, we've got raw, unfolding agony.

You have moments where you think you're doing well,

you're doing all right,

and then the reality of what's happened just hits you again,

just like a bus - bang, bang - knocks you back.

It's every parents' worst nightmare.

Your teenage son goes out to a party and doesn't make it back alive.

OVERLAPPING VOICES

The moment Charlie died, it became a murder investigation.

This is a step change for the police.

It makes it a major incident,

and it did mean that Yura had to be rearrested

for the murder of Charlie Cosser.

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

This was murder, child on child.

17-year-old victim, 16-year-old attacker.

Detectives need to establish the evidence in the finest detail -

what happened leading up to the party,

what happened at the party,

and then what happened after the incident occurred.

Charlie was in good spirits

because he was due to go on holiday on the Monday

with his friends to Zante.

And then on the Saturday,

he mentioned that there was a party that he wanted to go to

to see his friends that weren't going away with him.

For Charlie's parents, that came totally out of the blue.

Ironically, they were reassured that he was coming to a private party

rather than going on a night out in Guildford, which he talked about,

and for them, that seemed like the scarier option.

Trouble does happen there, you know,

kids are out there, they're having drinks.

You know, it does put that little bit of fear into you,

and I thought, actually, we'll both relax a little bit

because he was going to a party at a house

rather than being in Guildford.

On the night of the party,

Yura and his friends turned up looking for trouble.

The pair of them had a shoulder bag

that they'd been switching between them throughout the evening.

A witness overheard them make reference

to "getting the shank", "get the shank".

In other words, get the knife.

The witness looked up, Yura's friend held up the shoulder bag

while they made eye contact,

and the witness says she understood the knife to be in that bag.

If somebody brings a knife to a party,

that's likely to be because they are prepared to use it as a weapon.

A witness passed three boys

and overheard one of them saying that they wanted to stab someone.

Word went round that there was a knife,

but no-one raised the alarm.

Several witnesses said

that Yura and his friend had been drinking a litre of vodka,

half a litre each, and had become quite drunk.

A girl walked up to one of the friends

Charlie had gone to the party with.

She pointed in Yura's direction and said

somebody had been creeping her out and trying to touch her up.

Charlie's friend went across

and asked him to stop it or leave the party.

Yura said, "All right, mate."

But Yura and his friend didn't leave.

It made Yura Varybrus rather angry

at being accused of behaving improperly towards one of the girls.

Shortly before midnight, there was a second allegation.

A girl approached Charlie and his friend, and this time,

they both went over to ask Yura and his friend to leave.

The dance floor was crowded.

A witness said they saw Yura throw a punch at Charlie,

and Charlie fought back.

A ruckus erupted.

Charlie's friend had pinned Yura's mate to the ground

and was beating him up.

People pulled him off, and everyone was focused on that fight

rather than what was happening with Charlie.

Yura had a knife, and he reached for that knife,

took it out and used it to stab Charlie three times.

After the attack,

a witness saw Yura with blood all over his trousers

and heard him say repeatedly, "I've stabbed someone."

I saw Charlie crawling out of the tent,

and then it would have been, like, a two- to three-minute interval

to when they were walking away.

Before the police could speak to Yura and his friends,

they had left the scene.

Yura had made arrangements with a female friend of his

who'd been at the party for her mother to collect them.

Yura was taken to the girl's house,

where he burned his blood-stained clothing in a firepit in her garden.

The prosecution say that was a clear attempt to destroy evidence.

He never returned home that night.

The reality is there may have been none of Charlie's blood at all

on Yura Varybrus's clothes.

Yura Varybrus himself had suffered some wounds to his own hand.

In the act of stabbing Charlie, he was bleeding himself,

so the blood was quite likely to be his own blood.

The contact between Yura Varybrus and Charlie

must have been very brief, a matter of a few seconds.

Experts in relation to many stab wounds

would say many of them don't immediately bleed.

We don't know because the clothes were destroyed.

The evidence from the pathologist was that the fatal injury

which Charlie sustained was an injury to his aorta.

Initially, Yura pleaded guilty to murder.

When were told he had plead guilty, it was relief, it was a real relief.

Where a defendant enters a guilty plea,

there is then no need for a jury trial.

But then in October 2023, something very unusual happened,

something I'd never come across in my professional career.

An application had gone in for him to vacate his plea, his guilty plea.

The judge was being asked to accept

that Yura had been given poor legal advice initially

and wanted to change his plea from guilty to not guilty.

If she accepted that,

the Cosser family would be put through a full murder trial.

A judge was to decide

at a special hearing at Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex

six months before the main case was heard in the court in Brighton.

As far as we were concerned,

he'd already been found guilty, he was guilty.

That was torture. It was absolute torture.

Just imagine having your child murdered.

Just imagine having to go and pick up the clothes they wore

the night they were stabbed.

So, it's not a son coming back home, it's his clothes.

If you look here...

..you can see this is Charlie's t-shirt, the t-shirt he wore,

and you can see three stab wounds clearly on there.

But actually, they're really small knife wounds,

but yet they caused catastrophic damage.

The pillars there is where Lewes Crown Court is,

and just before the hearing there,

responses to Martin's TikTok campaign where mounting.

He killed my son...

If you don't know who Charlie Cosser is,

he's a 17-year-old boy who lost his life

after he was stabbed to death.

What really, I guess, moved me

was how quickly the views went up on the video on TikTok.

Like, this was reaching a lot of people.

I'm gonna tag Martin's account in this video

so you can click on the tag and go straight across and follow.

The Cosser family are gonna be without Charlie.

They're gonna be without Charlie

because someone decided to take a knife out and use it.

And that month, Martin's tireless campaigning online

was helping to push the story to the top of the news running orders.

First tonight, the father of a teenager who died

after he was stabbed at a party in Sussex.

On the day of the plea hearing, Martin was to learn

that the very qualities that make him a good campaign leader...

..here for us, look, all got our hoodies on.

All his friends, family...

..could land him in trouble.

He and his friends showed up to court

wearing matching hoodies with logos on.

All here for Charlie.

All here for my little boy.

Not only did the judge allow Yura to change his plea to not guilty,

but Martin was warned

staging such an emotive display at the subsequent trial

could influence the jury,

and so he was told not to do it again.

We're just reflecting on yesterday.

Really tough day in Lewes Crown Court.

And we now have to face the trial.

That was tough for the police too,

as they thought they had a guilty plea.

The not-guilty plea means that everything the prosecution presents

would be challenged by the defence, and so extra evidence was needed.

It was six months before Yura's trial started

at the court in Brighton,

and Martin either forgot or ignored the warnings

about demonstrations of support.

We did turn up, actually, on the first day of the murder trial

wearing our hoodies.

Not for confrontation,

because we've carried ourselves with dignity throughout,

but just through support and love for our child.

We were quickly told they needed to be removed.

The really important thing from the prosecution team's point of view

is to avoid anything being said or done which might, in any way,

influence or affect a jury's assessment of the evidence.

So, hi, we've had day one in court, and we're absolutely drained,

but a really, really, really, really full-on day.

He was in a trancelike state,

and he said six or seven times, "I've stabbed someone."

When that was heard out in court, I looked straight at the jury,

and they were all in shock, like the rest of us.

There is another turning point with the same witness.

Yura was seen fiddling with his phone.

The witnesses saw him turn his Snapchat onto ghost mode -

in other words, to conceal his identity on Snapchat -

and also switched off location services on his mobile phone.

Who's gonna turn off their location

when they've just been at a party for no reason?

There is a reason, and it's because he stabbed someone.

I looked at the jurors, and you can see, you can see their reaction,

there's... GASPS

There was a couple of sighs.

There was one particularly damning piece of evidence

which was played to the jury,

and it's too sensitive to show now in public,

but in it, a girl was recording

what she thought was her friend on the dance floor.

In fact, she captured the moment of the attack.

It showed Charlie falling to the ground,

and it showed one of Charlie's friends intervening

and grappling with Yura to move him away from Charlie.

And it was during the course of that fight

that Charlie was fatally stabbed.

But the biggest stir for the jury was caused

when they heard that Yura had arrived at the girl's house

and then burnt his clothes.

We all thought, hopefully, the jury will take in this information

and realise that he is 100% guilty

because who would just burn their clothes for no reason?

The girl who took Varybrus back home pleaded guilty in the youth court

to assisting an offender.

She was given a referral order.

The mother was arrested on suspicion of the same offence,

but no action was taken.

Yura Varybrus decided not to go into the witness box

to give evidence in his trial.

The jury retired to consider the verdict on the 3rd of June, 2024.

When the jury went out for deliberation,

we stayed right by the court pretty much at all times.

I've had an incredible amount of support and following

on TikTok and Facebook, so...

There were people who had been messaging me privately,

lots and lots of messages,

"Please let us know when the verdict comes through."

They're going through a trial for their murder of their kid,

so it's gonna be bad, no matter what.

But, you know, thoughts are with you

as well as probably from most of our followers as well.

And then we got the call from my dad

saying that they've reached a verdict.

Guys, all very emotional here.

We've just gone in, we've had the verdict,

and he's guilty on both counts.

It was for first-degree murder,

guilty for carrying and taking a weapon there.

He killed our son, but he's guilty.

Sorry.

The video of Martin announcing the verdict

just absolutely blew up on TikTok.

I was in tears watching it because it's just such a raw reaction.

Let everyone know he's guilty.

Today, we've had a real result.

The teenager who actually was responsible

for stabbing teenager Charlie Cosser to death has been found guilty.

Of course, up until this point, nobody knew who the killer was.

Yura Varybrus was 16 at the time of the killing,

he was 17 when the trial started, so he couldn't be named.

As the media,

we were going to have to apply to have his anonymity lifted.

We had heard that it would be quite likely

that his name would be released, but we weren't 100% sure,

so we were all holding on, like,

it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.

Yes, it's already out there.

The evil monster that murdered my son is called Yura Varybrus,

that's his name, and there's his family over there,

and everyone needs to know that, OK?

He showed no remorse, hasn't even flinched.

We haven't done sentencing yet, but he is responsible

for the murder of our little boy Charlie.

Where's Tara? Does anyone know where Tara is?

She's gone for a coffee. Oh, has she?

She weren't in a good way, mate. No.

When Martin was finally able to name Yura Varybrus as his son's killer,

there was just this absolute outpouring of support.

He killed our son...

For those of you that don't know who Charlie Cosser is...

Yura Varybrus was just 16... OVERLAPPING VOICES

This monster is called Yura Varybrus.

So, as of today, the courts, they've allowed the name to be released.

There was a slew of racist TikToks trolling Yura,

claiming he was a Ukrainian refugee, but he wasn't.

In fact, he was brought up in this country.

Later that day, Yura was sentenced to life in prison,

serving a minimum of 16 years.

Yura showed no emotion as he was being sentenced,

but as he was being led to the cells,

he raised his fist in a salute to his father.

So, we talk about it being a life sentence,

the life sentence is ours, that's the life sentence.

Friday, the 28th of October, 2005.

The funeral at Charter House School was huge.

More than 800 people showed up.

in any classroom, any youth club.

I wanna take about the impacts of knife crime.

'And while there's air in my lungs,

'I will continue to tell the story of my little boy

'and how incredible he was

'and make a difference in this country

'to prevent other families like ours going through this misery.'

Charlie had that effect on people.

When you met him once, you felt like you had known him for a lifetime.

So that's why I do these videos.

Charlie did know he'd been stabbed.

Did he know he was gonna die?

Was he scared? Was he calling for us?

It feels like we're in this lonely bubble

that no-one else understands,

and they're just never gonna understand

unless they've been through something like this.

It just feels like we're not really there.

Every morning, I pick up my phone, and I send Charlie a message.

It's a blue heart, love you, blue heart,

and I guess it's still my way of communicating with Charlie.

And most of the time, it is just "love you".

Sometimes, it's "miss you".

Subtitles by accessibility@itv.com