Sven Badzak had asked his mother, a doctor, to teach him first aid in case someone collapsed in the street after a heart attack or a stabbing. He never knew he would end up being a victim himself.
The 22-year-old became one of two people to lose their lives in violence in London this weekend, prompting the prime minister to say he was concerned about a “rebounding” of crime figures as lockdown ends. Fourteen others were wounded in a spate of seven unconnected stabbings on Friday and Saturday.
Sven’s grief-stricken mother, Jasna Badzak, 49, said her son had always wanted to help others. He donated some of his clothes to survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire and helped elderly people wherever he could. “He helped people all of his life,” she said.
Sven Badzak was was attacked on Saturday at around 5.30pm while waiting outside a bakery in Kilburn, north-west London, for smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels for himself and his mother. He was with a friend, 16, who was also stabbed and who is reported to be in a critical condition.
Following his death, the police issued a statement saying the young man had been involved in an altercation with a group of males who had chased him. His mother is devastated by their choice of wording, telling the Guardian that witnesses had contacted her to say he was simply standing waiting outside the bagel shop when he lost his life.
She said that her son never got involved in “altercations” or arguments with anyone. “The worst that ever happened was that I told him he was playing his music too loud,” she said.
“Just the day before he died he was crying because he was moved by something he saw on TV about someone who was dying from Covid,” she said. “He was a very loving boy.”
Jasna Badzak is a qualified medical doctor and wishes she had been there to help her son. “If only I had been with him when he was stabbed, I would have known exactly what to do to try to save his life,” she said. “But as his mother, the only thing I can’t do is return him from the dead.”
Sven Badzak attended Wetherby’s private school, the school attended by princes William and Harry, and then Roehampton University. He was hoping to do a law conversion course to become a solicitor. He was working with his father in his construction company in the meantime.
Badzak said she had not yet been allowed to see her son’s body. “I have received different information from the police – he was stabbed in the chest, he was stabbed in the stomach. They have given me several versions of what happened and of how he died.”
Badzak, who has previously campaigned for the Conservative party, called on the prime minister and other politicians to help her to get justice for her son, posting pictures online of him as a boy with Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron.
Originally from Yugoslavia, Badzak accused the police of “not doing their jobs properly”. “I feel less safe here in London with all the gang violence than during the war in the former Yugoslavia when I regularly had guns pointed at my head.”
Johnson said his thoughts were with Jasna Badzak and her family. “I think that what’s happening on the streets of too many of our cities is very, very sad and I want to see kids protected from some of the gang crime, the knife crime, the culture of violence that they’re all too often sucked up in.”
He said he is concerned there could be a “rebounding” in crime figures as the country emerges from lockdown, and said efforts were being made to ensure a “tough policing policy response” and also to “make sure that kids, young people, have other things to do, they don’t get sucked into the nihilistic culture of these gangs”.
“That’s no consolation, I know, to a grieving mother, but we are doing absolutely everything we can to fight those gangs,” he added.
When asked about the police use of the word “altercation” to describe the circumstances that resulted in Sven Badzak’s killing, a Metropolitan police spokesperson said: “Officers took a statement from a witness who reported seeing an argument between two groups shortly before the incident. The word altercation is a general term for an argument involving two parties. It doesn’t apportion blame to anyone and certainly doesn’t suggest provocation of any sort.
“We acknowledge in the same quote that the victim in this incident was chased and was then attacked by a member of the chasing group. The investigation is still at an early stage and inquiries into the circumstances are ongoing.”
Asked about the different information about Sven Badzak’s injuries given to his mother, the spokesperson said: “Officers were acting on the information they had available to them at the time. A postmortem examination will take place to establish the exact nature of the victim’s injuries.”
