LITTLE Reko’s daddy will never play football with him, be there for his first day at school, or see him grow up and go to college.

The lifetime of plans Blayne Ridgway had made for his young son vanished when he was stabbed by 16-year-old Eze Eke outside Que Pasa nightclub in the early hours of May 8 last year.

Now Blayne’s grieving mother and girlfriend have described how his death has destroyed their lives, in a bid to deter other teenagers from knife crime.

Julie Ridgway, 42, from Donnington, said: “The pain I feel is as if part of me is always missing. I’m not the same person I was, and I cannot see any way of being normal again.

“Every morning when I wake up, I realise it has happened and it’s true. I repeat the same thing again and again.”

She last saw her son on her 41st birthday, three days before Blayne was killed on a rare night out in Oxford.

The 22-year-old former Peers School pupil was stabbed in the heart and died at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

In December, Eze Eke, of Ridgefield Road, was told by Oxford Crown Court that he would serve at least 15 years in jail for the murder.

Reko, two when his father was killed, is now growing up without a father, and girlfriend Chrissie Atkins, 20, has been left a single mum.

She said: “Reko knows the church where we held the funeral service and when we walk past it he says it is Daddy’s church. We have told him that Daddy is up in the sky, and he points up at the sun and calls it ‘Daddy’s sun’.”

She added: “For me, the last year has been full of loneliness.

“I had him with me every day; I loved him; I moved to Oxford to be with him.

“Now I’m bringing up Reko alone when I thought he would always be here.”

Ms Ridgway added: “I see Blayne in Reko a lot, in his gestures, and the way he eats and smacks his lips together.

“He’s got the same cheekiness. At first after it happened, it broke my heart to see Reko. Now it keeps me going.”

The two spoke out as part of Thames Valley Police’s Operation Blade, designed to halt knife crime in the city.

Ms Ridgway said: “If I knew some teenager was out in Oxford carrying a knife, I would sit down and have a heart-to-heart with them.

“I would ask if they knew how much harm it could cause, and how many people it can hurt, not just the person stabbed, but family and friends who lose their future too.”

Miss Atkins added: “Carrying a knife is not cool and does not make you hard.

“You don’t know what it will do to other people’s lives.”