Mum finds son with stab wound to heart

A MUM has spoken of her terror after she found her young son collapsed yards from her home suffering a stab wound to his heart.

Vicky Timbers had raced out of her home to be confronted by every parent's worst nightmare. A short distance from her front door she found son Alex, who had celebrated his 17th birthday just a week beforehand, sprawled on cobblestones and bleeding from his chest.

Vicky, 47, said the family had recently moved from Widewell to Devonport so Alex could be closer to his college, Deep Blue Sound, where he was a first year music production and engineering student.

She said: "The day before yesterday he was so excited at having a driving lesson. He'd come home and said he was going up the road to see a friend.

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"Then 20 minutes later he rang me. His name came up (on the screen) and I thought he'd be saying could he stay out a little later."

Instead, Vicky listened in growing shock as her son gasped out: "Mum, Mum, I've been stabbed... please phone me an ambulance".

Vicky said: "His breathing was very heavy. He sounded awful.

"I asked 'where are you?' and he said 'I'm trying to get home'."

Vicky flew from the house to be confronted by the awful scene.

Paramedics treated Alex for what was initially thought to be a superficial wound to his chest, but more distress followed after the family reached Derriford Hospital's A&E.

Vicky, whose husband is an ex-marine, was accompanied by a friend and her husband, also an ex-marine.

She said: "What saved his life was Chris [friend's husband] who sat on the bed and noticed Alex shaking and couldn't breathe.

"He said he was going into trauma and he'd seen it before from battle-field wounds.

"He called the doctors over and within 10 minutes Alex was in for heart surgery. Without Chris saying that we would've brought him home."

Vicky said stabbing incidents were something you heard about, not something "you expect to happen on your doorstep".

She said: "He was very, very lucky. The heart surgeon said he was literally minutes from death. If he hadn't operated when he did, Alex could've died.

"To think, we had gone from a driving lesson to having to think about calling a priest."