North Shields mum Sylvia Welsh has spoken about the devastating moment she watched her son, Reece Allen, dying in her arms after the 24-year-old was fatally stabbed by a vicious thug
A heartbroken mum who cradled her dying son in the street after he was knifed to death has told how she still wishes she had been the one to die instead of him.
Sylvia Welsh says her life ended the night her beloved firstborn, Reece Allen, 24, was lured from his home and brutally murdered in a frenzied knife attack.
Now, 10 years on from the senseless killing in North Shields, the devastated mum has spoken publicly for the first time about the horror she witnessed and the agony she still lives with every single day.
She said: “I wish it was me instead of Reece. I think about that every day. I would rather it had been me. I feel like 10 years ago I died and nothing has been the same since then. The whole family is living with this missing piece.”
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Reece was knifed multiple times by violent thug Joe Welsh, who smashed a window at Sylvia’s North Shields home in the early hours of January 25, 2016, to lure Reece into the street. When Sylvia chased after him, she was led to the spot where her boy had been left fatally wounded.
“I didn’t realise he had been stabbed multiple times,” she explained. “He was bleeding and his breathing was starting to rattle. I was just saying: ‘Come on Reece, it’s mam, stay with us’.”
Despite her desperate attempts to save him, Reece died hours later in hospital. Now 54, Sylvia has revealed she is still tortured by the moment she came face-to-face with the man who would go on to murder her son. She says she remembers every detail of the night and how it will never leave her, Chronicle Live reports.
She explained: “What he did first was he came here. I heard banging on the window, I got up, it was quite early in the morning. He was shouting up at the window. I realised his face was contorted and he was really angry. He was swearing at us. I didn’t know who he was. I had never seen him before. I went to go down the stairs and he ran off. If I had answered the door maybe he would have lunged at me. I went after him, and I have struggled with that. I wish I had got to the door and opened the door and it was me.”
Moments later, Reece arrived home after being out with friends, and Sylvia told him how Welsh had put her window out and pointed in the direction her son’s eventual killer had fled.
She added: “Reece went running after him and I ran after him to try and stop him. I went to chase him and I said; ‘Stop just leave it’. I was trying to get him back. I knew this lad had lured him out to do something so I ran after him. The next thing I knew these three people came out screaming and crying. And one person shouted; ‘you need to get his mam’.”
It was as she chased after her son that she recalled seeing him staggering towards her before collapsing into her arms. The distraught mum said she knew it was too late, but she tried to have hope. She added: “Even in the hospital when they said there was nothing more they could do I said; ‘get out the way, I’ll do it’.”
The killer, who had a horrific record of violence, had targeted Reece after a “petty” spat on Facebook. Welsh, who was no relation to Sylvia, had spent the day drinking and taking drugs and had threatened to stab people in the hours before the attack. He sent Reece messages goading him into a fight, then smashed Sylvia’s window knowing it would draw him out.
Sylvia fumed: “This thing was notorious for carrying weapons. He was luring him and he just kept goading him. And the one thing he knew would get him was smashing my window. Reece was very protective of me. We could argue like dog and cat, but we loved each other.”
Welsh was jailed for life with a minimum of 25 years, but Sylvia says it brought her no peace, who says she has shut herself off from the world and people.
She continued: “Your world stops but nothing else does, you have still got to earn money and pay your mortgage. All I do is work, come home and look after the kids. Even exciting things are dulled down. My grandkids keep us going. I wake up every morning and the first thing I remember is Reece isn’t here. I have got to get up every morning and think ‘how am I going to get through the day?’”
Reece had been on the brink of turning his life around, waiting to hear back about a job on wind turbines and hoping to move into his own flat.
In a stark warning, Sylvia says no one escapes the devastation of knife crime. She said: “Nobody walks away from this unscathed. Even the passers-by. There’s no excuse whatsoever to carry a weapon, whether you are scared or not. If you are carrying you are either going to use it or have it used against you.”
