A mother has spoken of the moment her son was ambushed and stabbed in the chest after playing football with his friends.
Oshay, who is 15, was leaving a friend’s house in Birmingham when a huge blade was plunged into his chest and sliced his arm in a ‘random attack’.
His mother Sharday, 35, told Metro: ‘It’s always been my biggest fear. When the police called I almost fainted.
‘I started to panic, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Just a million thoughts came all at once, and I just started to cry.’
She described the moment she rushed to the hospital to find him on life support with a gaping knife wound in his chest.
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‘The police told me it was a minor injury, so when I saw him, I freaked out and started screaming because my baby looked half dead.’
He was taken for hours of surgery to fix his lungs that had been leaking air through the stab wounds. As he recovered, she could only hold his hand and pray that he would make it.
Days later, an alive but weak Oshay was able to tell his mother through his breathing tubes how he was attacked on a sunny Saturday afternoon on August 9.
‘It all happened so quickly’, she recalled. ‘He was at his friend’s in Winson Green playing football in the back garden.
‘And as he came out, he was ambushed for no reason and stabbed in his chest. The zombie knife somehow caught his arm too.
‘I know because the neighbours stood by and watched him bleed out.
‘His cousin and friends wrapped pieces of clothing on his arm to stop the bleeding and applied pressure to his chest. They saved his life. It must have been so scary for them all.’
‘I’m so proud and grateful to them all for handling the situation the way they did. Nobody should even see such violence at that age. Never mind be a victim of it.’
Zombie knives were banned in the UK in September 2024 with the threat of prison for anyone caught in possession of them. But a BBC investigation revealed that long-bladed weapons are still being sold online.
She said: ‘Zombie knives are crazy. They are supposed to be banned but they are still everywhere.
‘My son is a quiet lad and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘Because of his colour, he’s being put in this category of being just another black kid. But he isn’t, he has never been a gang or anything.’
What is a zombie knife?
That question has plagued politicians who have tried to take action on them in the past.
According to the Home Office guidance, a zombie-style knife or machete has a ‘plain cutting edge’, a ‘sharp pointed end’, and a ‘blade of over eight inches in length’.
It also needs to have one or more of the following: ‘a serrated cutting edge’, ‘more than one hole in the blade’, ‘spikes’, and ‘more than two sharp points in the blade’ – although that last point has exceptions.
The specific models listed by the government have names like ‘desert style machete’, ‘fantasy hunting knife’ ‘Rambo style knife’ and ‘cutlass style machete’.
It’s thought that the unusual name comes from the idea that such weapons could be used to kill monsters in a zombie apocalypse.
In June last year, 16-year-old Mikey Roynon was fatally stabbed in the neck with a large hunting knife described as ‘zombie-style’ during a birthday party in Bath, Somerset.
Shane Cunningham, also 16, was jailed for life in May after being found guilty of his murder, while his co-accused Cartel Bushnell and Leo Knight were convicted of manslaughter.
The mother said the inner-city area in the west of the city of Birmingham he was visiting has become ‘notorious for violence’.
‘There are kids targeting random, innocent kids and stabbing them for no reason at all,’ she claimed.
‘Residents in that area have been informing the police for months. All the parents are petrified. The area is being terrorised.’
‘I need anyone with even the smallest piece of information to come forward. Even if they don’t want to contact the police.
‘I’d ask people to be aware of the danger. Not only does knife crime cause death it causes serious injury and affects people’s lives forever. Things are never the same again.
A West Midlands Police spokeswoman said: ‘No arrests at this stage. Our investigations are continuing.’
Anyone with information can contact police on 101.
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