In the year ending March 2019, there were 43,516 knife crime offences committed in England and Wales. Police figures show a seven per cent rise in cases involving a sharp instrument over the past year. It will come as no surprise that knife crime is at an all-time high.
One woman who knows first-hand the devastating effects of such is Lynne Baird. Her son Daniel, who was just 26 when he was killed in a fatal stabbing in Birmingham in 2017. Daniel died of catastrophic bleeding, shortly after arriving in hospital. On the day he died, Lynne asked her other son, a doctor, how it could have happened? There was no first aid or bleeding control kit available at the time. Since his death, Lynne set up The Daniel Baird Foundation and campaigned for public access to bleed control kits in areas which are vulnerable to violent crime. In the West Midlands alone, police statistics show an increase in knife crime of 85 per cent since 2012. A survey conducted on those in the area found that communities feel stretched due to lack of government funding. However, Control The Bleed will receive £5,000 in funding from mobile network, giffgaff (giffgaff.com)to help them reach their goal to provide more bleed kits across the UK and the relevant first-aid training to save lives. We caught up with Lynne to hear more about her brave efforts.