The family of murdered teenager Owen Dunn have been sharing their story on national news as the ban on zombie knives comes into effect.

Owen Dunn was murdered on December 4, 2022 in Mazurek Way, Swindon, aged 18, after sustaining a single stab wound to his heart caused by a machete.  

Owen’s nan Trisha Aldred and family friend and founder of Owen’s World Foundation, Jo Davis, spoke to BBC Breakfast’s Jon Kay and Sally Nugent on Tuesday morning, discussing the new legislation which makes it illegal to possess zombie knives and machetes.

Trisha told the presenters Owen was a “lovely boy”, saying: “He’d melt your heart and he’d do anything for anybody – as long as he got a couple of quid out of it.”

“He wouldn’t harm a person, his friends used to go to him to tell him their woes – he was like a mini dad.

“I couldn’t believe it; I could still imagine that day. Christmas songs were just on which was a bit early in December and they were going to watch the football down the local pub.

“We knew something wasn’t right because we could hear helicopters and things and his girlfriend kept ringing Zoe and then putting the phone down, so they went out and investigated and there was a white tent. Then she phoned me and she just said ‘mum he’s dead.’

“I thought ‘who?’ and I had to run to my brothers two doors away and when I told my brother he couldn’t believe it – just unbelievable.

“You don’t expect an 18-year-old boy to go out quarter past one Sunday lunchtime to end up dead in quite a nice respectable area.”

She added that she had never seen a zombie knife before and was shocked by the size of the blade when she was shown a picture of one during the court hearing, explaining that she had doubts about the ban on large blades.

“I don’t think a lot of youths of today are going to take a lot of notice”, she told Jon. “I know that we say parents should check their children because really parents should take some responsibility, but then I will also say, they could hide them, so the parents could check them but they could be hidden somewhere.”

Jo added: “Look for shifty behaviour. Are they coming home with expensive trainers, have they got friends that are new that you don’t know, are they going missing? Don’t be afraid to check their bedrooms, check their bags.

“They’re your children and you should be knowing what they’re doing and who they’re with. Be open and honest with them, get them involved and let them know they can come to you if they need to.”

When Jon asked if there was a correlation between people carrying knives and feeling frightened, Trisha explained Owen carried a knife for his own protection.

“On the Wednesday before he got kind of attacked in JD sports … Owen’s words were ‘they’re trying to murder me.’

“He was frightened for his life I truly believe, but I don’t think that particular day he thought anything was going to happen to him, because he was just going to his girlfriends.

“Straight away we admitted he carried one and I will say it’s because of the incident on the Wednesday and he was murdered on the Sunday.”

Jo concluded: “Kids are now going to get smarter, they’re going to try a lot harder not to get caught with them because they know they’re going to face a sentence potentially. They need to look at the bigger picture.

“It’s literally a drop in the ocean what’s happened today.”