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ITV News
08-08-2025
- ITV News
Youth worker stabbed in Sheffield school attack thought she was 'going to die'
WARNING: Video report contains distressing images from the start which some viewers may find upsetting. A youth worker who was stabbed with a shard of glass when a teenager launched a frenzied attack at a school says she thought she was going to die. Molly Bulmer was visiting Birley Academy in Sheffield on 1 May 2024 when 17-year-old Louis Melotte entered the reception with the weapon hidden up his sleeve and started attacking a student. Ms Bulmer, who works for the Sheffield Wednesday Community Foundation, was one of two adults to intervene in the attack who ended up being attacked themselves. She is speaking out as part of an ITV Calendar investigation which has found a knife or sharp object is found at a school in South Yorkshire on average every ten days. Ms Bulmer said: "I thought I was going to die. It was terrifying. I've never experienced anything like it before. "It was just a bit of a fight or flight response. I was just trying to get him out of the school basically, out of the school grounds, through speaking to him - trying to guide him back through the car park. "Because through the other doors you're heading into the main school and obviously that could have been disastrous. "It just happened. It's just what I did. I wasn't thinking about anything specifically. I don't think anyone can prepare for how they're going to respond in that situation and if it happened again would I respond the same? I have no idea." Ms Bulmer managed to calm Mellotte down and waited with him until police arrived. She and the other victims escaped the attack with minor injuries but says it could have turned out very differently. She said: "It could have been devastating really. All three of us that were attacked could have been killed essentially. "I think the fact that he brought a shard of broken glass as opposed to something like a knife is what saved us in a sense because it was just not quite as fatal." Violence in schools on the rise A ITV Calendar investigation has found violence in South Yorkshire schools is on the rise. A Freedom of Information request revealed there were 245 knives or bladed articles found in the county's schools since 2018 - an average of one every ten days. Meanwhile in 2024 there were 713 assaults in South Yorkshire schools, a rise of 45% compared to five years ago. The findings come on the day Sheffield teenager Harvey Wilgoose's killer was found guilty of his murder. The 15-year-old was stabbed twice by another boy of the same age at All Saints Catholic High School on 3 February. Louis Melotte was found guilty of three counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm after admitting two counts of wounding without intent and possession of a sharply pointed article on a school premises. He was given a 10-year extended sentence. Ms Bulmer and receptionist Alicia Richards were praised by a judge for their bravery during the attack and were later awarded Certificates of Commendation. Ms Bulmer works with children who may be at risk of turning to crime in her job. Over a year on, she says she thinks about the attack every day, but it has not put her off making a difference at work. She said: "Some days I feel really angry, some days I feel really resentful towards what happened. But other days, doing the job that I do, it makes me think let's get one kid to not take a knife out or to not take a bladed article out with them. And it motivates me a bit more to do what I'm doing. "But it's definitely made me realise that I'm doing the right job. I still want to do this. Because at first I was thinking: will it put me off working with young people and working with young people that are your typical naughty kids? But they're not all like that. There's no such thing as a naughty kid in my opinion." Birley Academy told ITV News it has increased the frequency of its lockdown drills to once a term since the attack last May. Headteacher Victoria Hall said: "The safety and wellbeing of our students and staff is our top priority. We have comprehensive and rigorous procedures in place to ensure a secure environment for everyone in our school community." But the rise in violence in schools, and the fatal stabbing of Harvey Willgoose, 15, at a Sheffield school, has prompted calls for more action to keep young people safe. His 15-year-old killer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of murder on Friday 8 August. Harvey's parents have campaigned for metal detectors known as knife arches to be installed in every school. One of the UK's leading manufacturers Risk Metal Detectors they say more and more schools are ordering them. Byron Logan from the company said: "We've seen our school business double and I think we're going to triple it by end of this year. Currently schools are our largest customer. In previous years it's been police and security companies. Now we're definitely moving into schools dominating this field. "We're dealing with an uptick in violence within the youth of our country and I think that's one of the big reasons that's driving this."
ITV News
03-07-2025
- ITV News
Prisoners at HMP Hull learning basic reading and writing to prevent reoffending
Convicted criminals at an East Yorkshire prison are being taught primary school-level reading and writing in a bid to stop them reoffending. ITV Calendar was given exclusive access inside HMP Hull to see first-hand a scheme in which trained prisoners teach fellow inmates how to read. Some, including violent criminals and sex offenders, are being taught basic letter sounds, or phonics, in lessons normally aimed at five-year-olds. One repeat offender, who is serving his latest sentence for attacking an emergency worker, said: "I didn't go to school at all as a child and obviously I couldn't read and write. But then that affected me thereafter as well." The man said in the last 10 months the lessons had helped him to read a letter from his daughter for the first time. He said: "I cried, to be honest. It was the first email that I could properly read for myself. I sat in the pod and cried when I read it. But it was nice tears." More than 70% of people in prison struggle with reading. Some cannot read at all. Around two thirds struggle with basic numeracy. At Hull - a category B prison built in the 1870s and housing about 1,100 men - each new arrival is asked if they struggle. Those who do are referred to the programme. The sessions are run by the adult learning charity Shannon Trust, which supports people who have fallen through the cracks in formal education. The charity says formal education for prisoners makes them much more employable - and having a job halves their risk of reoffending. About 200 have learned to read in the last year. Analysis by reporter Helen Steel For more than 150 years, criminals have been housed at HMP them, the Moors Murderer Ian Brady and Charles Bronson, once dubbed Britain's most dangerous in one quiet corner of this overcrowded Victorian establishment, the scene more closely resembles a primary school classroom than a correctional facility. Inmates sit around a table sounding out digraphs - two-letter combinations like "ch", "sh" and "th". I have previously reported on the efforts taking place in some secondary schools to help 15 and 16-year-olds learn the basic skills they should have mastered years earlier. But it is even more striking to witness these grown men, serving time for serious offences, struggling to grasp rudimentary reading and writing. Some on the outside might take issue with the idea of those on the inside learning soft skills rather than facing tough justice, but the Shannon Trust insists that, ultimately, society at large stands to benefit. They say that reading is a right that many here have been denied from childhood. And by giving them that opportunity inside these walls, it will break the cycle of reoffending that so many in here have struggled to overcome. Teresa Drinkwater, head of education at the prison, said many of the inmates had spent a lifetime hiding their lack of education. "They are masters at disguising the fact that they can't read or write and they manage that through school," she said. "When you talk to people who have learned to read, it's the best kept secret." One of the mentors, who was locked up in January, said he struggled during school but he wanted to help others escape a life of crime by becoming a volunteer with the Shannon Trust. "My school life was very hard so I truanted a lot over the years," he said. "I do believe this is why a lot of people do go into crime - because of the reading problems. If I can actually make the difference and help people turn away from crime by learning how to read rather then, yeah, it's great you're making a difference." Prison officer Jane Good said: "Prisons are always at capacity, unfortunately, and so therefore I think whatever we can do to change that trajectory of life - let's let's just put as much effort into them being able to get on the ladder."
ITV News
13-06-2025
- General
- ITV News
Air India plane crash: 'Bright and wonderful' student from Leeds confirmed dead
A 'bright and wonderful' 22-year old student from Leeds has been named as one of the 241 people who died in the Air India disaster. Dirdh Patel, an Indian international, had returned to India to ask his girlfriend's family for permission to marry her, family friends have told ITV Calendar. He was living in Leeds with his brother, Krutik, and sister-in-law, Keya, after he came to the UK to study a masters in Artificial Intelligence at Huddersfield University. A family friend, Raj Kaur,said he will always be remembered as a "wonderful person." "He was the nicest, smiliest, and had a positive outlook on life. He'd only just started his adult life. He was so incredibly bright, softly spoken, just a wonderful person. It's a huge shock, really awful. "It's so heartbreaking because he was so excited to be coming back and set up a life for himself. Knowing his brother, this is going to change them all forever." Dirdh's brother and his wife have since flown out to India to be with the rest of the family following the news. Raj says his family are struggling with his death. "His mother isn't doing very well, she has become quite ill. She dropped him off at the airport and has literally driven away from him and heard the explosion. It doesn't bare thinking about." The London-bound Boeing 787 struck a medical college hostel when it fell in a residential area of the northwestern city of Ahmedabad minutes after takeoff. It burst into flames, killing 241 people on board and several students on the ground. Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane crashed near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than five million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state. Air India confirmed there was only one survivor on the flight - UK national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh - who is receiving treatment in hospital. The plane's black box was recovered from a rooftop near the crash site Friday, and India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said it has begun its work with 'full force.' The plane crash is one of the deadliest in terms of the number of British nationals killed and the first involving a 787. Aviation experts have speculated about a number of possible causes for the crash, from both engines failing – possibly due to a bird strike, as happened in the so-called Miracle on the Hudson in 2009 – to the flaps on the aircraft's wings not being set to the correct position for take-off.
ITV News
08-05-2025
- Sport
- ITV News
Bradford City stadium fire: How city quietly marks the 'forgotten disaster' 40 years on
On 11 May 1985, 56 fans died in a fire at Bradford City's Valley Parade stadium. To mark the 40th anniversary of the disaster, ITV Calendar sports reporter Chris Dawkes spoke to many of those who were there. I was born in 1981 in Pudsey, a market town around five miles from Bradford city centre, so I was only three years-old on 11 May 1985. I have no recollection of the fire at Bradford City 's Valley Parade stadium, which claimed 56 lives, and I don't ever remember people talking about it. The Hillsborough disaster happened four years later - that dominated conversation in the playground. How could 97 people die watching a football match, the game we played every lunchtime? It just didn't make sense. Whenever anyone says the word "Hillsborough", even now, it evokes feelings of despair and sympathy. But Valley Parade? For most football fans it's just a stadium. For those with no interest in the game, it probably means nothing at all. My dad was an English teacher in Bradford. He told me some years later, when I was old enough to understand that bad things happened in the world, that a couple of boys he taught were at Valley Parade on the day of the fire. They were in the old Midland Road stand, opposite the main stand which caught fire, and even from that distance the heat was so intense that some loose coins in their pockets burnt their legs. That was it. Nothing more. I knew that people had died, but the number 56 was never mentioned. It was only when I joined ITV Yorkshire in 2004 that I was to learn more about the disaster that happened so close to home. I'm probably one of the last "old-school" breed of broadcast journalists who didn't take a journalism degree or post-grad and when I started in television it wasn't as a journalist - my first job was in the ITV Yorkshire news library. It was in that dusty, murky archive that I was to encounter the "restricted zone". This mountain of film and tape was off-limits to pretty much anyone except us archivists, and among the catalogue was the footage of the Bradford City fire. It was widely accepted that under no circumstances should this footage be allowed out of what was effectively a locked prison. Why? What was so contentious? Of course, I wasn't aware of the full extent of what was imprinted onto that film. One day, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to unlock the mystery of the forbidden tapes. What I watched shocked me. I understood instantly why this footage was restricted and I started to appreciate more about what is referred to, by some, as the "forgotten" football disaster. As the 40th anniversary of the fire approached, I thought there was an opportunity to revisit the archive to take an in-depth look at what had happened and speak to some of those involved at the time. For one thing, many of them are unlikely to be around to share their recollections for the next "significant" anniversary. But myself and producer Mark Witty, a Bradford City fan and journalist of more than 40 years' experience, were unsure whether people would open up. Why would anyone want to relive what was such a traumatic experience? The answer was, to keep the memory alive. Virtually everybody we approached agreed to speak on camera. To such an extent that we ended up with over 30 interviewees: players, fans, commentators, survivors, bereaved loved ones, emergency service staff, nearby residents. Each with their own unique story to tell. They included John Dewhirst, a Bantams fan since 1972, and the authority on all things Bradford and Bradford City. He told me how the football club's decline mirrored that of the city, a once thriving industrial powerhouse. After the Second World War the closure of the cotton and wool mills had a devastating impact on the city, while the club toiled. By the 1980s, Bradford City hadn't competed in the country's top two divisions for over 40 years. Peter Jackson, the club's captain in 1985, reflected that the wooden main stand - built as a supposedly temporary structure in 1907 and condemned shortly before the fire - was a "tinder box waiting to happen." And so it proved, as commentator John Helm told me as he recalled watching a small fire turn into a deadly inferno, almost in the blink of an eye: "Within four and a half minutes the whole stand was gone." Matthew Wildman, 17 in 1985 and walking with crutches due to severe rheumatoid arthritis, was among the last to escape with his life. He spoke in graphic detail about seeing the skin on his hands "bubbling" from the heat as he threw himself over a wall to get out. Meanwhile, others waited in vain for news that their loved ones were safe. Glenys Dempsey had waved her husband off earlier in the day and was at home with her daughter Georgie, following the match on the radio when the fire broke out. "When he was leaving he said to me 'don't start cooking at the normal time because I might be late home'," Glenys said. "He never came home." Hearing Glenys and Georgie tell their story brought tears to the eyes of all us listening. And it is striking how the memories of 11 May 1985 continue to stir up raw emotions among those who were in Bradford that day, four decades later. Even men hardened by years working on the frontline of policing and the fire service still well up as they tell their stories. "We didn't get counselling. The local pub was our counsellor," former firefighter Ken Hunter said. "Virtually everybody knew somebody who had been involved in some way," said John Dewhirst. The city mourned for weeks afterwards, but with a quiet fortitude which typified Yorkshire stoicism. Memorials were held, an inquest was launched and a subsequent inquiry determined that a discarded cigarette or match had ignited rubbish in the void beneath the stand. And then the media attention surrounding what had happened slowly ebbed away and the world moved on. What struck me from speaking to those who continue to carry the memories of 1985, though, is that there is no desire for fanfare or fuss. Every year, Bradford City honour the 56 in their own way - with a special ceremony on the pitch. I was at the last home match of this season when the commemorations were held. It was fitting that the occasion also saw Bradford earn the win they needed to gain promotion to League One. Fans flooded the pitch. The mood was joyous. Just as it was in those days, hours and minutes before 3.44pm on 11 May 1985. Over the next few days, the Bradford City fire disaster will feature on news channels, radio stations, and in newspaper articles. But then, for many, it will become a faded memory. The people of Bradford, though, will never forget.
