Mum of murdered Gloucester teen Joshua Hall tells killer she is 'haunted' by watching him die
The mother of a boy from Gloucester who was stabbed to death by another teenager has said she will be forever "haunted" by seeing her son die in hospital.
Joshua Hall died in April last year after being stabbed at a sports ground near Dursley in Gloucestershire.
Today (February 4), Joshua's killer can be named for the first time as 16-year-old Harley Demmon after Mr Justice Chamberlain lifted a reporting restriction.
The incident happened when Demmon and Joshua met up to "sort out their differences" at Cam sports ground. Unknown to Joshua, Demmon had a knife concealed in his waistband.
He used it to stab Joshua six times and the 17-year-old died in hospital the next day.
Demmon was sentenced to a minimum of 14 years in prison at Gloucestershire Crown Court today.
In a victim impact statement read at court, Josh's mother Kirsty Hall said the 16-year-old killer had "decimated" her family, "changing the course of their lives forever".
"It took under one minute for our whole life to be blown up into a million pieces", Mrs Hall said.
Speaking of her heartbreak when she visited her son in hospital, Mrs Hall said: "We were waiting in the hospital and telling him he couldn't leave us and he must stay and fight, and fight he did for 11 hours.
"My last words to Josh were, 'You hurt so much and you are not coming back from this. Go and be with your sister, I promise it will be OK."
"This moment will haunt me forever, seeing my small boy lying on a bed surrounded by tubes", she added.
Mrs Hall said she would never be able to forgive Demmon for killing her son.
"I hope that you one day comprehend the actions you took that day", she said.
"You decimated our family and changed the course of my family's life forever.
"You apologised in court. But you misrepresented the facts to extricate yourself from the consequences of your actions."
"I do not accept your apology, I will never find forgiveness in my heart for what you did".
Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Superintendent John Turner commended the way the community had pulled together in the aftermath of the murder on 16 April.
He said: "We all too regularly see the impact that the murder of a loved one can have and I would like to highlight how Josh's amazing family remained so dignified throughout the whole process.
"The death of a young person in these circumstances has had a huge impact but there has been a continued sense of willingness from the community to engage with the police, which enabled the investigation team to understand and present what had happened to the jury", he said.
“This ultimately resulted in them reaching the guilty verdict within three hours and I hope that this will allow the Hall’s to have some form of closure in knowing that their son’s killer is behind bars."