PRESS RELEASE : Pooja Kanda’s story – Knife Crime Summit [September 2024]

The press release issued by 10 Downing Street on 10 September 2024.

Pooja’s son Ronan was fatally stabbed in 2022. On Monday 9 September, Pooja attended the first annual Knife Crime Summit at Downing Street.

Within seconds, my whole life was shattered.

I miss talking to him. I miss hugging him, hearing his giggles, his laugh, his loud noise, his cheeky look in his eyes.

It’s horrifying to know that a beautiful child of yours – a good person, a good human being – has been taken by something so cruel and for no reason. Because they mistook him for somebody else.

On the evening of 29th June 2022, Ronan went to play snooker with his friend. It was the first time he’d gone out after finishing his GCSEs. It was a treat.

I was out of the house at a meditation class. My neighbour, who was at the class with me, got a call. I got up, hearing the commotion.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“There’s been a stabbing on our street, we need to get home,” she replied.

I didn’t know then that it was my own child. You don’t think it can happen to you.

I remember ringing Ronan, but he wasn’t picking up the phone. That’s not like Ronan – Ronan knows, he knows me, he knows to answer. But he didn’t.

My husband was at home, so I rang him and asked him to go outside to find out what was happening. He told me that Ronan had popped out for five minutes to go to his friend’s house. We both agreed to phone Ronan to tell him to get home as soon as possible.

My husband rang back crying.

“It’s Ronan, Pooja. They’re saying it’s an Asian-Indian boy.”

The perpetrators had stabbed him in his abdomen, 20 centimetres deep with a 20 inch Ninja sword. When he turned around, they stabbed him again with a Ninja sword that went through his heart. The blood was pouring out of his body.

He tried running home, but he collapsed two doors away from his house.

On my way from class, I remember asking my friend to drive me quicker and I jumped out of the moving car. Running towards the police taped area and begging the police officers to let me through, to let me hold my child.

Even though the paramedics tried to operate to save him, my Ronan died on the very street he grew up. He didn’t stand a chance.

An innocent child walking home. Murdered, just like that.

In the court case, we found out how the online sale of these threatening bladed articles played a massive role in my son’s murder. Since then, we have been and will continue fighting for a ban on machetes, zombie knives, Ninja swords and other bladed weapons. There is no need for these deadly knives to be in our society. In the wrong hands they are lethal weapons.

For each murder that happens, there have been clear failures in our system. Ronan’s murder happened because a Ninja sword was bought using a parent’s credit card with no ID checks. We also hear about the failures within the education system, within the policing system, within online sales and more. Now all these failures are being addressed so we can start correcting them.

We’re going down the right path.

If it takes a bit of time, so be it. But we need to understand that this needs to be dealt with from now on.

I would like to thank Sir Keir Starmer, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Idris Elba and my MP Pat McFadden. These are the people who are passionate about this issue and do want to make a difference. So, thank you to them.

I feel very grateful to be here, so I can share my child’s story and can fight for him. I feel like there are other people who don’t get heard.

What happened to Ronan should never have happened. My Ronan was a good, funny, humble, charismatic, intelligent and kind boy. He was every mother’s dream son.

From his school, a mother approached me to tell me how Ronan stopped their child getting bullied – now that child remembers my child and was heartbroken to learn what had happened.

He was a beautiful person and he was too good for this world. I apologise to him every morning for bringing him into this cruel world and not being able to protect him. So, this is my way of doing something for him.

Ronan’s Law will be a strong move and bring, I hope, much-needed change. Banning these weapons should be the basic start to combatting knife crime.

In my son’s memory, I have a tattoo on my arm of his heartbeat – the words underneath say: ‘Mom is proud of you, Ronan’ and his name is in his own writing. His mantra was to make me proud.

I’d give my life today for Ronan, if I could. I wish I gave my heart to him to save him. Every child deserves to grow up safely and I wish my son had this opportunity. I am the proud mother of Ronan Kanda.

I’m just a mother fighting for what’s right.