In a heartbreaking interview coinciding with a Channel 4 documentary on so-called zombie knives, a grieving mother has revealed her son's chilling premonition before he was murdered at a teenage house party. Hayley Roynon says she will never recover from the loss of her 16-year-old son, Mikey, who was stabbed in the neck with a zombie knife during a violent altercation in Bath.
A Final Phone Call and Every Parent's Worst Nightmare
"Love you mum," were the last words Mikey Roynon said to his mother, Hayley, during a phone call before he left for a party with friends in Bath, Somerset, on a Saturday evening in June 2023. Hayley had travelled to Birmingham for a work event, leaving some money for her son and promising they would catch up properly upon her return.
However, after the awards ceremony concluded, Hayley switched her mobile phone back on to be confronted with over thirty missed calls from Mikey's phone and from his friends. "I knew instantly something was wrong," she recounted. "I rang his phone and one of his friends answered. He said 'Mikey's been stabbed and he's gone'. I remember thinking 'he can't be'. I think I went mad at him and said 'Why are you saying that? Why would you even do that?' and I put the phone down."
A Scene of Horror in Bath
Rushing to the Bath address where the stabbing had occurred, Hayley arrived to find a forensic tent erected and police tape cordoning off the area. "It was raining and it was cold," she remembered. "And I just remember the policeman coming over and saying 'somebody's been stabbed and killed here tonight, we believe it's your son Mikey.' I thought he was still alive."
Avon and Somerset Police had responded to reports of a stabbing at a house party on 10 June 2023. The violent confrontation among teenagers resulted in Mikey, a popular youngster from Bristol with a passion for music, suffering a fatal wound to the neck from a zombie knife.
A Talented Youth with a Tragic Foreboding
Mikey Roynon was a talented young man who had performed in his primary school's talent show at just five years old. He later progressed to writing his own rap lyrics and creating drill music that amassed over 250,000 online views. Despite the sometimes violent themes in drill music, Mikey had no gang affiliations or criminal record.
Disturbingly, his mother Hayley recalls that Mikey was acutely aware of the rising knife crime in Bristol and the surrounding areas. "He used to say to me, I'm going to get stabbed," she revealed, a prediction that would tragically come true.
The Investigation and Court Case
Following interviews with party attendees and analysis of CCTV footage, police detained 16-year-old Shane Cunningham and two other associates. All three initially pleaded not guilty and declined to give evidence. During the trial, one witness suggested Mikey had been brandishing a knife himself and that the defendants acted in self-defence.
However, police maintained that Mikey was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. James Alexander, a criminologist with over twenty years of experience working with young offenders, explained the changing nature of youth violence. "Shane wouldn't have been on anyone's radar because he's got no convictions. Fifteen years ago, if someone's going to be stabbing someone, they would have had prior convictions. Now they don't. And so to be able to predict who is at risk is getting harder."
Alexander added, "And again, with Mikey, 10-15 years ago, if you've been a victim of violent crime, we would kind of say that you've been involved in a gang or some kind of criminal activity. Nowadays that isn't the case... Young people nowadays, going to a party, they're going to think other people at a party are going to carry a knife, so they're going to carry one too. It's just like putting on trainers before they go out. I think about where my keys are. They think about where their knife is."
A Life Sentence and a Mother's Unending Grief
Mikey suffered a single stab wound to the neck with a zombie knife, an injury so severe that his chances of survival were minimal. The two other boys, who cannot be identified due to their ages, were originally found guilty of manslaughter, but their convictions were later quashed by an Appeal Court judge.
Shane Cunningham was convicted of murder by a jury and handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 16 years. For Hayley Roynon, this verdict offers little solace. "He could be out when he's 32 - he can come out and start a new life," she said. "How is that fair when Mikey can't have kids and I'm never going to have grandchildren?"
As a documentary examining the deadly impact of zombie knives airs on Channel 4, Hayley's story highlights the devastating human cost of knife crime and the profound grief that continues long after the headlines fade.
