Excited Shazad Ali arrived home with a large teddy bear for his wife Khansa who was four months pregnant with their first child.
It was August 1 2011, her birthday, and just over a year since the pair, from Birmingham, had married. She hugged the bear and they giggled together, staying up late in bed discussing plans for their son or daughter.
Three days later, on August 4, a young black man, Mark Duggan, was shot dead by police in Tottenham, North London, tensions flared, and his controversial death sparked protests.
The tragic incident couldn’t have seemed further removed from the couple’s happy bubble miles away.
But without warning, those protests exploded, combusting into widespread looting and rioting across the capital, and then around the country, including the second city, the largest incident of unrest in recent modern history.
The police appeared to have lost control, holidaying politicians including Prime Minister David Cameron, and then London mayor Boris Johnson initially stayed away. As the violence raged, by August 9, feeling abandoned by the authorities, Shazad, 30, joined his brother Abdul Musavir, 31, and other members of their community to guard local shops and businesses from rioters.
What is the legacy of the 2011 riots? Join the discussion in the comment section
It was there the brothers and their neighbour, Haroon Jahan, 19, were mown down and killed by a car which drove into the crowd in the early hours.
Ten years on, Khansa admits she still has the teddy, but has had to hide it away because it is too upsetting for her now nine-year-old son, Abdul Wahid, to see. Photographs of Shazad have gone with it for the same reason.
Her voice faint as she gives her first interview since his birth, five months after his father was killed, she explains Abdul struggles to manage his grief.
“When Abdul was a baby he was always hugging the teddy,” she explains.
“When he was five he told me he just wanted to touch and hold his father, and feel his love. He would hug the teddy as if it was his dad. But now we have put it away because it upsets him. He has become very emotional asking ‘Why did he have to go?’”
The 2011 riots feel like a distant nightmare for most, but are still re-lived acutely within this broken family. Khansa suffers depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. She lives with Shazad’s younger sister, Sumera, 35, who is called “second mum” by Abdul.
“I feel I have not been a proper mother without Shazad,” Khansa admits, despair in her voice.
“When Abdul was first born I couldn’t accept him,” Khansa adds, painfully. “When they handed him to me I pushed him away.
“I held him that night and thought of all our plans. Quickly, I felt comforted by him.
“He looks like his dad,” she adds, with a quick smile. “And when he laughs he has his father’s laughter. He starts and can’t stop.”
The shooting of Duggan, 29, who was being trailed by undercover police, was contentious. It was found to be lawful, yet the firearm officers believed he had was found metres from his body, over a fence. Whether he had thrown it before, or as he was being shot, is debated.
Protests outside the local police station enflamed. Police vehicles were targeted, buses set alight, and mindless destruction spread to local homes and businesses, seeping across London, with thousands joining mass looting. Rioting began in other cities.
By August 10, more than 3,003 arrests had been made across England. More than 1,984 people would face criminal charges, looters including young professionals who could barely explain why they joined in.
People were made homeless, businesses were lost. Five were killed.
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It was Ramadan and Shazad and Abdul had broken fast with their family before they left to join the worried community in Winson Green.
The local petrol station had been set on fire, cars burnt, shops smashed and the local social club robbed.
Khansa was asleep when she woke to hear Sumera crying down the phone. The three men had been taken to hospital and nothing could be done to save them.
Khansa emotionally recalls a doctor and police officers breaking the news in hospital.
“I held the police officer’s wrist, saying ‘Take me to him, he will wake up, there is no way he is dead’. I was shaking him, saying ‘Wake up, wake up’. I was shouting at him.”
In the days that followed she was terrified the rioters would return.
“I was scared for myself and my baby,” she says. “Scared they would come to the house, throw petrol bombs.” In fact the family, and Tariq Jahan, the father of the third man, Haroon, did everything to quell community anger.
Khansa’s family was later given police awards for encouraging peace. The day after the killings, Tariq, 55, spoke to crowds calling for rioters to go home. They did.
Ashen-faced, he said: “I lost my son, step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise calm down and go home, please.”
He was thanked by David Cameron, Prince William, and given a Daily Mirror Pride of Britain Award.
Khansa’s family once had their awards on the wall, but have now taken them down. They can no longer see any meaning in them.
A few months after Abdul’s birth in January 2012, eight men stood trial for the trio’s murder, but all were acquitted.
The prosecution alleged the incident had been an intentioned and coordinated modern-day “chariot charge” involving three cars.
But the defendants said driving into the assembled people had not been deliberate. The driver, Ian Beckford, explained: “I was just frightened, I just wanted to get past the group.” The judge said the deaths were a “terrible accident”.
Previously, the trial had been suspended because of complaints over mishandling within the police investigation, leading to directions to the jury to disregard some evidence. The IPCC found a junior officer responsible, but he had already retired so no disciplining followed.
Khansa and her family, and Tariq Jahan, all say they are left with an empty sense of “injustice”. They have called for a public inquiry to no avail.
Meanwhile, Khansa is left raising an angry son desperate for answers.
“We had only told him his dad had gone to God, we were waiting until he was older to tell him what happened,” she explains. “But a child at school told him, he came home and took my phone and watched videos on YouTube.
“He has changed since then, he gets angry and frustrated.
“Recently we sat down with him to watch our wedding video, to talk about his dad, but he walked out of the room.”
A decade on, the riots have faded in the nation’s memory.
But within this Birmingham home, a little boy is only just beginning to attempt to understand why they happened. And why they claimed his dad.
'There could be a repeat of this'
Tariq Jahan was credited with ending the riots after his son Haroon was killed, with his powerful call for peace. But today he says he fears they could happen again.
The father, 55, describes rushing to the three men not knowing one was Haroon, 19, until he flipped his body over.
“I started CPR on him and and when I blew into his mouth warm blood shot out of his nose and onto my face,” he describes.
He started the Haroon Tariq Jahan Foundation and has since helped community causes including homelessness and mental health services.
He warns: “This country is again sitting on a knife edge, you can feel the tension in the air.
“People are very uncomfortable, a lot of faith lost in the system, people don’t trust what is happening.
“People are struggling, they are out of work and there’s very little money. The government is not spending on young people, there are a lot of young people out there with nothing to do.
“There could be a repeat of this. I pray to God there isn’t and no one else loses their life.”
