The candid words of a grieving parent laid bare the stark consequences of knife crime like nothing else could. Last Autumn, Debbie Makki stood up in front of a crowd of people at Manchester Cathedral and spoke about the day her 17-year-old son Yousef died, after being stabbed through the heart.
Debbie told those who had gathered there for an anti knife-crime summit about the moment she learned he was gone, when a surgeon turned to her at a hospital and solemnly shook his head.
She bravely recalled how it felt to not be able to hold the Manchester Grammar School pupil, because his body was now considered to be evidence.