Family of Connor Brown launch Trust in his name to tackle knife crime
Video report by Katie Cole.
A trust in memory of a Sunderland teenager has been launched by his family, in the hope of others not meeting the same fate as their son.
Connor Brown was stabbed five times outside a pub in Sunderland and pronounced dead in hospital an hour later.
The 18-year-old was trying to break up a fight that had started between young lads in an alleyway when he was fatally stabbed in the chest.
From that point, life as his family knew it "would never be the same again".
Leighton Barrass was jailed for life for murdering Connor and ordered to serve a minimum term of 20 years. Ally Gordon was jailed for three years and six months for manslaughter.
Now, his family are keen to help prevent knife crime and help as many young people as they can.
The Brown family say the aims of their Trust include enabling young people from disadvantaged communities "to have access to an innovative youth work programme, that will help to raise their aspirations and give them an understanding of how criminal activity can affect themselves and the wider community."
The Connor Brown Trust will also promote "social inclusion by removing inequalities for young people who are predominantly from low-income families and do not have the same life chances as their more privileged peers."
In a eulogy, posted on the Connor Brown Trust website, his family said:
"Until the events of recent times, which hit you all like a steam train. Rocking you to your core. Events which now leave us here today, when we really shouldn’t be and, when we really wish we weren’t, trying to make sense of it all; asking why, why such a lovely young lad with so much life still to live, can be taken away from us? And we wonder. We wonder what might have come his way. What twists an turns, stories and dreams.
Today though, despite the pain, we celebrate Connor. The lover of life. The lovely lad with that sparkling smile and the twinkle in his eye. And we remember those happier days and the sunshine and the abundant joy he brought to so many lives. Lives which were all the better for having been touched by his. After all, he has woven an indelible mark into the very fabric of all of your lives."
The Trust is founded and directed by Connor's mother, Tanya, and is primarily based on Wearside.