Murdered Rhys: Friend pays tribute

Aug 28 2007

A friend of murdered Rhys Jones today said he will miss him for his “whole life”.

Michael Edge, 11, described Rhys as funny and lively and told how the pair had enjoyed playing football together.

“He was my best mate. And I miss him. And I’ll miss him for my whole life. I just always remember him. Me and him both, we always wanted to play footie,” he told Channel Five News.

And he described his shock at hearing his friend had been killed.

Michael said: “I was more upset the next day because I was just shocked and it felt like a dream when I first heard it.”

He said he no longer wanted to go out and play, adding: “It’ll be boring now because he was the funniest person to play with out of all of them.”

Football-mad Rhys was killed last Wednesday night as he made his way home after football practice.

He was shot through the neck by a teenage gunman riding a BMX bike.

Michael’s mother Ann, told how her husband Tony, the coach of the boys’ football team, Fir Tree Under-12s, had been unable to make practice that day.

She said he had received a call at home telling him what had happened and then raced off to to Rhys’s house, where he broke the devastating news of the shooting to Rhys’s mother and then drove her to the “horrific” scene.

Mrs Edge said: “They should just come forward. They shouldn’t be frightened because you know this kind of thing can’t happen.

“If everybody’s too frightened to say anything, then is this what life’s going to be like living in this country? You can’t just keep quiet. Somebody must know something.”