Father of Stabbed Teen Calls for Knife Crime Crackdown

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The father of a teenager who was stabbed to death in Dublin in 2019 has been speaking about the need to tackle knife crime.

Abdul Raguragui said last week's killing of 25-year-old Ademola Giwa brought back painful memories.

In 2019, Abdul's 18-year-old son Azzam was killed in Dundrum. Abdul expressed his frustrations at the lack of action taken to tackle knife crime since his son's death.

"There's no action," he said. "I didn’t see anything. Of course it’s frustrating. I’m surprised actually and in the meantime I am deeply shocked how they can seize nearly 1,000 knives in eight months – not even in the whole year. I don’t know what they are waiting for. How many lives do we have to lose to push this issue? We have to take action, otherwise we’re going to lose more and more lives."

"I was deeply shocked," Abdul said of Giwa's death. "I was deeply shocked. It was like somebody poked me. I have that feeling because I lost somebody. Probably if you haven’t lost somebody, you won’t have that feeling, you know. Parents have a unique feeling towards their children."

Abdul appealed for those with influence over youngsters to become involved in educating about knife crime.

"I am appealing and asking celebrities to share and participate in a campaign to tackle this issue," he said. "This new generation, they are following celebrities on social media. They won’t watch the news. We need to get through to them on social media."
 

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