Almost a year has passed since her ‘blue-eyed boy’ was cruelly snatched away from her in the most senseless and sickening way, but for Zoey McGill it may as well have been last night.
Her memories of that fateful evening last October are crisp and fresh; the heart-wrenching pain of losing 18-year-old Jack has not been numbed with time.
The grieving mother visits his graveside at West Cemetery in Newton Aycliffe every night, unable to let go of the connection she had with her murdered teenage son.
In what would become one of the North East’s most infamous killings in recent years, Jack Woodley suffered a fatal knife wound after a gang of ten youths attacked him as he left the fun fair at Houghton Feast with his girlfriend.
Zoey said: “It feels like it happened last night. Every day, every single day I wake up and it is like being in a nightmare.
“You cannot get out of it. You cannot explain it to somebody who has not been here.”
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Jack was punched, kicked and stamped outside the Britannia Inn on Newbottle Street in Houghton-le-Spring before the gang followed him down a back alley where he was stabbed by a 15-year-old boy armed with a ‘survival’ knife.
He died the following day, October 17, in the RVI in Newcastle despite the best efforts of medics to save him.
Zoey, who has two other sons, and is married to Chris, said: “I went there (Houghton-le-Spring) the other day and I went to the back alley where he was attacked."
Zoey said: “I could hear Jack laughing on the phone to me. I looked around and saw them putting the fairground together. Is it like they have forgotten about happened to Jack.
“I could see him on the rides going around.
“That is the memories I have and they are there every single day. They are with me for life. They do not go away.”
Zoey is undergoing counselling for the trauma she has suffered dealing with the loss of Jack.
During the trial at Newcastle Crown Court, before all ten youths aged 14 to 17 were convicted of murder, Zoey found the barbaric details of the attack too much to handle and took an overdose with the intention of ending her life.
She is now undergoing counselling to help her and wants her own unenviable but unique story to be used to warn young people of the dangers of carrying a knife.
Recalling the horror of the night, Zoey said: “I had spoke to Jack at 8.30pm.
“He was on the phone, laughing. I hear his laugh all of the time."
Zoey said: "He was saying: ‘It is mint, it is class here, the fair is mint’.
“He loved fairgrounds, loved the bright lights and the noise.
“At 9.20pm I got a text off his girlfriend say he and Jack had been attacked. I started panicking.
“She wrote he had been stabbed.
“I thought I was going to collapse. I started screaming to my husband saying: ‘Jack’s dead, Jack’s dead’. I was really freaking out.”
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Zoey and Chris drove to the RVI from their holiday home in Whitley Bay.
When they arrived, Zoey said it began to feel as if she was in a television drama.
She said: “I got put in a room by the police. That is when I knew. It was like on television when they get put in a room.
“They said ‘we are going to take you through, but you are going to get a shock.
“We went through and saw him but it wasn’t Jack. That image will stay with us forever.
“I remember sitting and saying: ‘What have they done to you, What on Earth have they done to you?”
As part of her campaign to raise awareness of knife Zoey has taken the decision to release a heart-breaking image of Jack lying in intensive care, hours before he died.
Zoey said: “He was swollen and his head was bruised where they had hit him with a knuckle duster. He was bleeding from his ears.
“They had to open his chest and perform heart surgery because he had gone into cardiac arrest at the scene.
“It was surreal. When you get told something has happened to your child you never expect to see him like that.
“It knocked the wind out of me. I just remember rocking back and forward.
“It was awful, it was shocking. There was just too much damage.
“I want people to see what we have gone through as a family and what the effects of carrying a knife are.”
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