MYSTERY surrounds the final moments of a young man who was stabbed to death by a stranger in the street.
Dylan Keelan, 20, was fatally attacked by a teenager with a 25-inch blade after popping out of a house party to go to a corner shop over the road.
Dylan Keelan was stabbed to death just a couple weeks from his 21st birthdayNicole Wardle
Mum Nicole Wardle’s life has been turned upside down since her son’s deathNicole Wardle
Dylan was leaving this Premier convenience store when he was stabbed by a strangerGoogle maps
Dylan – who was just two weeks away from turning 21 – had been initially hesitant about attending the party, just a mile from his home, as he was worried he wouldn’t know many people.
His mum Nicola Wardle was waiting up in bed for his safe return when she received a cryptic Facebook message from a woman about her son.
And said she’s still haunted by her final call with Dylan hours earlier in which he went to tell her something as she hung up.
“This girl was saying ‘I need to get in touch with Dylan’ – but when I asked why, she didn’t respond,” Nicola, 44, from Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, told The Sun.
“I was trying to ring her back but she wasn’t answering.”
The girl had said something had happened in Duckinfield, less than a mile away, and when Nicola began scrolling through Facebook she saw a police incident was underway.
She began panicking thinking Dylan had been involved in a car crash – and living round the corner from the hospital she dashed over there.
However, staff said they’d had no calls and it didn’t appear anyone was being brought in from that area.
Nicola continued trying to ring the girl and then as she began phoning police, her brother pointed her to Facebook posts saying “RIP Dylan”.
“I said what? I’m in a daze thinking what the f*** is going on?” recalled the mum-of-two.
“Two police officers came round to the house and said ‘we have a suspicion he’s been murdered.’”
Nicola said all of this had happened within about 40 minutes “but it felt like hours”.
Her mum had come over to the house, and prior to the cops arriving her brother had headed out in a taxi to the scene in Cheetham Hill Road.
“He saw the tent and my son’s feet,” she said. “So then we knew.”
Police officers came to and from the house in Russell Street for the next few hours and told Nicola they’d detained two or three people but were still hunting for the killer.
“It was like that for days – they wouldn’t let me see him as he was evidence,” she continued.
“He died on the Friday night but I couldn’t go to him until the Monday, and even then he was behind glass.”
Dylan had been stabbed at around 9.30pm on February 4, 2022 and 17-year-old Klayton Skelly would eventually be arrested and convicted of his murder.
“My son was 20, two weeks off 21,” said Nicola. “He’d gone out with friends to the pub after work, and watched the United match then onto a party.
“I thought I was past that phase when this could have happened.
GMPKlayton Skelly, who was 17 at the time, admitted murdering Dylan and was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years[/caption]
Nicola is still haunted by her final call with DylanNicole Wardle
Nicole WardleThe young man had been at a house party across the street when he went to buy some more booze[/caption]
“I was naive, probably, and it was just a case of bumping shoulders with the wrong guy.”
Nicola recalled speaking to Dylan on the phone at around 7pm that evening.
“It was so silly – he’d left some of his wages in his room before he went out.
“He said ‘mum, can you put a tenner in my bank and just take it out of my drawer?’
Nicola told him jokingly, “let me check it’s there because I know what you’re like”.
“I said, ‘alright, I’ve done it’, and he started to stay ‘mum’ but I was already putting the phone down.
“Afterwards, I thought was he going to say something? And I couldn’t get it out of my head.
“It was probably something like ‘I love you’ or ‘I’ll be back later on’.
“Whenever he went out, I used to hear him come in and I could settle then.”
Describing the incident which saw her son killed, Nicola explained the party was right across the street from the shop and Dylan had initially not been keen on going.
Nicole WardleNicola was waiting up in bed for when Dylan got home[/caption]
Nicole WardleNicola has been campaigning to get knives off the streets since the tragedy[/caption]
Nicole WardleTributes left to Dylan at the scene of the attack[/caption]
He’d finished work at a factory which makes sausages and gone to the pub with a pal who then got invited to a house party, and despite fearing he wouldn’t know many people, Dylan eventually agreed to go.
Later that night, Dylan and a friend had gone to buy a bottle of vodka across the street and it hadn’t even been opened when he bumped into Skelly on his way out of the Premier convenience store.
Nicola was later shown CCTV of the attack, which she says has left her with PTSD.
“They bump shoulders like you could do with anyone on the street, and they both look at each other, and this guy pulls this big knife from his pants,” she said.
Nicola said Dylan then kicked it out of Skelly’s hands and punched him before two other youths “jump on him” and the attacker picks up the knife and “slams it into his chest and his stomach”.
“It was a 24-inch blade,” she added.
Nicola said recently she saw one of those other boys had been posting on social media about his 18th birthday.
“I’m not a bad person but it makes me angry – my son was just two weeks off 21, he didn’t get to celebrate that.”
Dylan had asked his mum for a new tracksuit, which cost over £100, for his birthday.
“I still bought it and he was cremated in it,” she said, holding back tears. “His cousin got him some brand new trainers, he looked really smart.”
Dylan had initially been sceptical about going out the night he was killedNicole Wardle
Nicole WardleHe was buried in a PlayStation themed coffin[/caption]
Nicola says she now struggles to go out due to anxiety and is due to begin sessions with a counsellor.
“I go out and I see a group of lads with hoods up, and it’s probably all innocent but I’m looking to see if they might be carrying a knife,” she said.
“I shouldn’t think like that. Other times I’ll see someone who looks the double of my son and I want to follow them, but I know I shouldn’t be doing that.”
She went on to say she was “dead bubbly” with lots of friends before Dylan died.
“I can’t bring myself to go out – I know it’s just me but it’s turned my life upside down.
“You don’t think this will ever happen to you. It’s a hard thing to even bring up in conversation, that your son’s been murdered.”
In court, she said Skelly, by then 18, “was just a little kid, he wasn’t what I was expecting”.
“I don’t know what I was expecting. I thought you’re just a child and you don’t know what you’ve done.”
She said when he was jailed her and her family clapped in the courtroom – and as he was led out she stood up and told him face-to-face: “I hope you see my son’s face every night, because I do.”
Nicola added: “I made sure I said that. He just stared back.”
Following Dylan’s death, his mum never slept in the house they shared again.
His younger sister, now 21, had already moved out to live with her partner when Dylan died, so it had been just the two of them for some time.
Nicola stayed at her mum’s home before eventually buying a small flat elsewhere in the town.
“It wrecked my life, stripped everything,” she said of Dylan’s death. “I just couldn’t have gone back living there. Since that day I haven’t been right.”
She went on to say: “I just take each day as it comes. Getting the word out about my son and how I feel about knife crime helps me as well.”
Nicola’s been campaigning to get knives off the street, and has worked with other mums who’ve lost children to fatal stabbings.
Speaking soon after Dylan’s death at a press briefing, she tearfully said: “I am appealing to mums, dads, aunties, uncles, grandparents, teachers – anyone who cares about a kid or the safety of the streets which they walk.
“Since Dylan died, I’ve received so much support but, this afternoon, I ask you to help me ensure my son’s death is not in vain.
“If you know or suspect your kid or any kid you care about is carrying a weapon, please do something before it’s too late.
“Have a conversation with them; help them surrender it; or report it. Doing something might seem hard but it could save a family heartbreak like mine.
“Look at my life, look at what could happen – everything changes overnight.”
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