My name is Tanya Brown and my son was killed in a knife attack in February 2019. My son Connor went out on a night out to celebrate a friends birthday and he never returned home. Connor was stabbed 5 times with a number of other injuries, one knife wound penetrating his heart. The city of Sunderland showed a outpouring of grief and supported me and my family through what became the darkest of years we have ever had to face.
In the aftermath of the trial we still had so many people supporting us as a family and we felt the need to give something back to a city that gave us so much when we needed it. We thought the best thing to give back would be to prevent another family going through the same heartache, and to ensure there children feel safe when out and about with friends.
We set up the Connor Brown Trust in September 2021 with aims to educate, prevent, and support families and young people. We have been to a wide variation of youth groups, sports clubs and football tornaments speaking to young people on the dangers of knife crime. We have began and educational programme in schools which will continue. We will be visiting schools everyweek speaking to children and young people from the ages of 11 -16. We aim to attend primary schools children in Ks 2 aged 9-11, and colleges of young people aged 16+.
We want to bring about positive change to children and young people, we want to ensure our children and young people feel safe at all times. We want to ensure the public feel safe and that all measures are taken in order to save a life when it comes to accidents or acts of violence. Anything can happen in the blink of an eye and lives can be lost and many others heartbroken.
