Hundreds release balloons and join march to mark anniversary of Leith murder victim John McNab
‘There are certain days where I feel like: I need John back - it’s been too long’ - Lisa Petrie
Hundreds of people took part in a candlelit march through Leith to mark the one-year anniversary of a murder which shocked the city.
John McNab, 22, was stabbed to death in Great Junction Street in the early hours of Tuesday, September 2 last year. A 17-year-old male youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has since been given a life sentence, with a minimum term of 17 years behind bars, after admitting his murder.
John’s mother Lisa Petrie has campaigned ever since his death for bleed control kits to be made widely available and for knives not to be so easily accessible in shops.
And a year after the attack that killed John, a crowd of around 200 people joined her on Leith Links, next to a mural of John on the Leith Athletic FC building, to release balloons in his memory. John played for the club from the age of seven until his mid-teens
They then walked, carrying flowers and candles, to the Kirkgate where the Knife Angel - a giant sculpture made from 100,000 knives and blades seized by police across the UK - is on display until September 27.
And from there they continued along Great Junction Street to the spot where John died and laid more flowers.
Earlier in the day, she discovered that the flowers she had tied to the lamp post at the junction of Great Junction Street and Bonnington Road the day before had been taken.
She said: “Somebody horribly stole my flowers that I’ve been religiously putting there since the day John died. But the community came through for me and one of the girls, Claire, from Muirhouse Millennium Centre, touched my heart and came along and put more flowers up for me. It just goes to show that myself and John have got an army behind us.”
Reflecting on the 12 months since John’s death, Ms Petrie said: “It has been a quick year, but there are certain days where I feel like ‘I need John back - it’s been too long’.”
And on her campaign work, she said: “People are listening. I’m just hoping that once they Angel goes at the end of September they still keep talking and they still keep working for change.”
She said rolling out bleed kits across Edinburgh and further afield remained her main priority. “Everywhere needs a bleed kit. I’m not saying that if a bleed kit was available it would have saved John, but it would certainly have given him more time for the paramedics to arrive.
“And I don’t want another mum - or sister or brother - stood here when there are aids out there to help them.”
She also believes restrictions on knives could make a real difference. “I’m not asking shops to stop selling them - I’m just asking them to take them off the shop floor so they’re less accessible to be stolen or bought using fake IDs.”
The SNP manifesto at the Holyrood election in May promised to roll out bleed kits to community settings and public areas including high schools, supermarkets, community centres and parks. And John Swinney repeated the pledge about community settings in his Programme for Government on Tuesday.
Ms Petrie is due to meet the First Minister on Monday along with Edinburgh North Eastern & Leith SNP MSP Ben Macpherson to discuss progress.
Mr Macpherson paid tribute to her hard work in campaigning tirelessly since her son’s death.
He said: “What Lisa has done, with the others who are supporting her, is truly remarkable - to take grief and heartbreak and injustice and turn it into action to try and make our community safer and to try to make sure no other family has to experience the horror she has had to suffer.
“As her MSP I have sought to do what she wants to do, and that has involved her campaign for bleed kits which has been very successful and is now going to be rolled out across the country and has already been very significantly rolled out across the city.”