Seeing my son Raafat setting off for school in his smart uniform always makes me proud. It’s the same uniform my brother Yousef wore to Manchester Grammar School, and it’s a poignant reminder of everything we lost when Yousef was stabbed to death in March 2019, aged just 17.

There were 11 years between Yousef and me. When our mum Debbie got together with Yousef’s dad, Ghaleb, I always begged her for a little brother. I adored Yousef from the moment he was born. We all did. It was clear from an early age that he was very bright. His teachers said he was so clever the staff were having to do extra training to keep up.

We were all thrilled when he received a scholarship to the nearby Manchester Grammar School, a prestigious private school. Mum was single by then and had rheumatoid arthritis, but she scrimped to buy the expensive school uniform and was full of pride when Yousef quickly became an A* student.

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He didn’t just excel at his studies, he was sporty, too, playing basketball, football and tennis. And he loved boxing. He made some great friends, among them Adam Chowdhary, who was from a wealthy family like most of his friends.

When Yousef went out in the evenings, Mum never worried because he visited the well-to-do areas and she thought he’d be safer there than in Burnage where we lived. At 17, he was planning his future and hoped to go to Oxford or Cambridge to study medicine and perhaps become a heart surgeon. None of us doubted that he’d make it.

By then my husband Mazen and I had two more children, Zack and Daniel, who, like Raafat, adored their Uncle Yousef. He’d spend hours patiently playing with them all. But then, on 2 March 2019, our world was shattered.

I’d just put the children to bed when the phone rang. It was Mum. Something bad had happened to Yousef and we should get to the hospital quickly. I couldn’t drive so Mazen went, keeping me up-to-date with phone calls while I paced up and down at home.

Mazen called again. Yousef hadn’t made it. He had died from a single stab wound to the heart. We were all distraught and none of us could understand how this could have happened. The world of knife crime was completely alien to us.

The next morning I went to the mortuary. Yousef looked so peaceful, as though he was just sleeping. There was still gel in his hair. But when I kissed him on the forehead and felt how cold he was, it brought it home that he’d really gone.

The police said the incident had happened in the affluent Hale Barns area. Shockingly, Yousef’s friend Adam and another school friend we didn’t know, Joshua Molnar, had been arrested. At first, Joshua said Yousef had been attacked by strangers, but he later admitted that he’d stabbed Yousef. He said it was self-defence and that the knife was Yousef’s.

It didn’t make sense. Yousef hated violence and, of course, he wasn’t there to tell his side of the story. Joshua was charged with murder as well as perverting the course of justice for lying to police about the attack, and for possessing a knife. Adam was charged with perverting the course of justice and possessing a knife.

Yousef’s friends rallied round but we heard nothing from Adam or Joshua – no apology, no remorse. When the trial was held in June 2019, Mum and I attended every day, along with family and many of Yousef’s friends. We were touched when teachers from the school came, too.

It was really hard listening to the defence’s position that the boys were involved in drugs and that Joshua had killed Yousef in self-defence after he’d taunted him about an earlier fight with some drug dealers. The narrative seemed to be that Joshua and Adam were just naive teens from good families while Yousef was portrayed as a drug user with a temper. Still we thought, at least Joshua would be punished for killing our lovely boy.

After the four-week trial, we’d barely ordered a cup of tea at the café near the court when we got a call to say the jury had reached a verdict. It had been so quick, we were full of confidence as we rushed back to the courtroom. But when the verdicts were announced, none of us could believe it when we heard the words “Not guilty”. Joshua was cleared of murder and manslaughter. Adam was cleared of perverting the course of justice.

All the emotion we’d been holding in came flooding out. We were all devastated, sobbing and screaming. It seemed no one was going to be held accountable for Yousef’s death. The boys admitted possessing knives and Joshua admitted perverting the course of justice. He was sentenced to 16 months detention and Adam to four months, sentences we felt were far too lenient for knife crimes.

Joshua was released after just eight months, before we reached the anniversary of Yousef’s death. We felt betrayed by the justice system and Mum poured all her energy into campaigning. There was so much support in the community and we raised money for a legal team to look at the evidence again. But everything stopped when Covid hit. Mum struggled during the lockdown.

She was isolated and, without the campaign to focus on, she only had her grief. In May 2020, she developed sepsis. Her organs failed and she died in hospital. I really believe she died of a broken heart. I couldn’t fully comprehend that I’d lost her, too.

We set up the Yousef Makki Foundation for underprivileged kids, which feels like a fitting way to remember the caring boy he was. Not that we’ll ever forget him.

There are photos of him in the house and I even have the clothes he was wearing when he died, including his blood-stained shirt and the trainers he got for his 17th birthday and loved wearing. I couldn’t bear to throw them away. Yousef had such a promising life ahead and it was brutally snatched away from him, and from us.

Please note that a version of this story was published on May 2022.