Essex grandmother fundraises for bleed kits in memory of murdered grandson
She wants the kits placed around the county
The grandmother of an Essex teenager who was stabbed to death has fundraised for over one hundred potentially life-saving bleed kits to be placed across the county.
19 year old Liam Taylor was murdered outside a pub in Writtle on 31st January 2020. Three men were jailed for the killing last year.
Now, his grandmother Julie Taylor, from Chelmsford, is working to make sure no one else suffers the same fate.
In the last year, the Liam Taylor Legacy, set up by Julie, has raised over £16,000, enough money for 2 defibrillators, 7 24-hour control units and 101 bleed bags, each containing bandages, a tourniquet, blanket and chest seal, which will help treat stab victims or anyone suffering from catastrophic bleeds, until an ambulance arrives.
She's now campaigning to get them placed in local businesses and locations across the county, and eventually, the whole country: "You can bleed to death within three minutes, so the main thing is getting these kits in every single premises, every pub, school, shop, nightclub, anywhere where there's youths or could be accidents.
"They need to be no more than 3 minutes apart, and hopefully they can be absolutely everywhere."
Julie knew she wanted to do something to help, following Liam's death, and came across Lynne Baird and her campaign to roll bleed bags out at more than 50 venues in Birmingham after her son, Daniel, 26, was stabbed to death in 2017: "When you have such a tragedy, you come out thinking 'how can I help people?'... I was just going through the internet one day and came across Lynn Baird... had this equipment been on site her son probably wouldn't have died... once I saw that I knew this is what I've got to do."
She says the pain of losing Liam doesn't get any easier, but hopes her efforts will make a difference: "I don't want to be doing this. I have so many friends that I've met through the knife crime world, and I wish I never met any of them. I wish I didn't know them.
"People don't understand. They feel sorry for the family and think we've suffered but that because it's been a year we must be getting over it, but you don't get over it.
"The pain gets worse every single day because we've had his 21st birthday, we've got his 25th, and his 30th. He's not going to get married or have children - we have to cope with all those milestones.
"He shouldn't have been murdered. It's that simple. So many things have got to change...
"I've just got this passion. I must save somebody. If somebody else is saved from going through this because of us losing Liam, it will just ease the pain very, very slightly."