Mother left paralysed by stress amid the Met's incompetent investigation into ... trends now

I would have given anything to see my son’s killers jailed for life. I wanted to look into the eyes of the callous creatures who murdered my boy.

They were apparently laughing and booing as the judge sentenced them to life with a minimum of 27 years. 

I wish I could have seen, as the implications of the sentence sunk in, whether they had a semblance of the pain I endure every moment of every day, existing without my child.

Instead, I was forced to watch from my bed via video link. Eighteen months after losing 22-year-old Sven — my only child — I had a cardiac arrest.

I was in a coma for ten weeks and have been left paralysed. My arms are completely useless. As a medical doctor, I know it was brought on by the stress of losing Sven and of fighting to bring his killers to justice.

A gang of six stabbed Sven to death in a frenzied and completely motiveless attack which lasted all of 20 seconds. The pathologist’s report shows that one of the wounds was seven centimetres long. 

His chest was stabbed with such force that the knife came out of the other side of his back. Only three of them have been convicted — Rashid Gedel, 22, and Shiroh Ambersley, 23, who were sentenced on Thursday and Harvey Canavan, 19, who pleaded guilty earlier to manslaughter and unlawful wounding.

The others are still brazenly walking the streets. One, who the Mail has pictured exclusively online, even managed to flee to the Ivory Coast, in West Africa, under the noses of the police. 

The authorities know exactly who they are. Their names and nicknames came out in court. But I believe the police are sitting on their hands as they tell me they have other murders to solve. But they can be sure, I won’t rest until these monsters are behind bars too.

Of course, I’m pleased that three of the killers are now safely locked away and, of course, there are examples of outstanding individual police officers. But what I have learnt about our force since Sven died has been simply devastating. 

In my experience, the Metropolitan Police were so incompetent that each arrest was like climbing Everest. Police have only two jobs — to try to prevent crime and to solve crimes quickly and efficiently. They failed Sven on both counts.

I owe it to Sven — and to all the other mothers out there who face losing their children like me — to expose the truth.

Believe me, this is not a fight I want. It seems almost impossible to believe but once, not so long ago, I was a happy, normal mum, content with my lot. 

In Sven, I had everything I could possibly want. He was the kindest son, my only child, my everything, who had the brightest of bright futures.

He was a natural leader, who his teachers predicted would become prime minister one day. Sven met Boris Johnson many times — as chair of my local Conservative association in West London, I signed Johnson’s nomination papers for his bid to become Mayor.

Caring, too. When Sven saw smoke billowing from Grenfell Tower, up the road from us, on that awful night in 2017, he grabbed everything from his wardrobe and started emptying mine. 

Then he marched me to Waitrose to buy food and supplies that we filled the car with, to help survivors. When we reached the scene, he was choked by a sense of helplessness, desperate to hand out what we’d brought.

He hit the shops again during the Covid pandemic, buying essentials for our elderly neighbours who were self-isolating. 

He once asked me to teach him first aid in case someone collapsed in the street after a heart attack or a stabbing. Never for a second did we guess he would be the one needing help.

His dad, Dragomar, and I are divorced but we were united in our love for our son. After leaving our native Yugoslavia in 1992, to escape the war, I retrained as a financial analyst so we could afford to send him to Wetherby School — the same pre-prep school that Princes William and Harry attended — then the independent Portland Place School in Marylebone from where he won a place at Roehampton University and took a sociology degree.

He had intended to start a law conversion course, but deferred it because of the pandemic and worked instead, part time, for his dad’s construction company.

February 6, 2021, started as any normal day. In the morning, Sven had gone shopping with his dad. 

He’d bought some hair dye for me and took photos of it to send me so he knew he’d got the right brand. But he forgot to buy orange juice.

Later that afternoon he declared: ‘Mum, I really fancy a bagel.’ His favourite was one with cream cheese and smoked salmon. ‘I’ll go out and get one for each of us and also buy your orange juice,’ he said.

I didn’t want him to go — it was snowing heavily. But he wasn’t taking no for an answer and walked to the Waitrose. 

A friend who lived nearby — whom Sven had met playing football — queued with him outside.

When it got to 6pm and he wasn’t home, I started to worry. I rang him again and again. There was no answer. 

I’ve seen the CCTV footage which shows his phone lying beside his dying body — the screen lighting up with every one of my calls. It’s a picture I can’t get out of my head.

Sven and his friend, who was also badly wounded in the attack, were targeted by the six men in a case of mistaken identity. They thought that the two of them were encroaching into ‘their’ drugs territory.

They tracked their

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