The photo that nearly cost me everything
A youth mentor has shared a picture of himself posing with a sword and machete before he escaped the gang wars claiming young lives.
Anton Noble says he ‘could have lost everything’ if he had continued down the path that led him to wield the knives at the age of 16.
Anton now helps young people in the same situation he was in to escape the streets — including those imprisoned or with high levels of trauma.
The outreach worker told Metro.co.uk how he fell in with a gang based in Walsgrave, Coventry, which waged turf wars with rivals.
‘The picture shows me lost and holding the two knives like they are trophies,’ he said. ‘They made me feel like I had power.
‘They made me feel like I had found myself. Looking back now I feel sorry for this person. This person would never have made 18.
‘This person would have never had children. This person could have been in prison, and this person could have lost everything.’
Anton, now 33, spoke after data released by the Office for National Statistics showed that knife-enabled crime rose by 7% between December 2022 and December 2023. The figures released in April also showed an 81% increase across England and Wales over the past decade.
One shocking example of the problem came with the jailing of two boys believed to be the UK’s youngest knife murderers. The pair were both aged 12 when they killed 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai in an attack with a machete in Wolverhampton in November last year.
Now aged 13, they were each jailed for at least eight and a half years at Nottingham Crown Court last week.
‘I understand how young people feel carrying these weapons,’ Anton said.
‘However I’ve not carried these weapons for 13 years, and I’m still here and have chosen a different path.
‘A lot of people are at the stage I was at, where I was trapped between who I was and who I wanted to be.
‘For all of those in this situation, you’re never in too deep to change.
‘I’ve been out of gang culture for over 13 years, I have three beautiful children and a lovely lady by my side, and I have found purpose and enjoy helping people to change.’
Growing up in a broken home, Anton found a street ‘family’ instead, narrowly avoiding going to jail after getting in trouble with the law.
His wake-up call was when someone close to him almost died through drugs. He found the church and stayed away from the bad influences in Coventry, where he grew up and still lives, which had led him astray.
The city has had a deadly toll of young knife crime victims in recent years, contributing to what the Prime Minister has described as a ‘national crisis’ of offences involving bladed weapons.
Anton now leads the Guiding Young Minds intervention team, a mobile outreach service which operates under the auspices of the ASSIST Trauma Care charity.
Travelling to schools, prisons and roadsides, the young people he has supported include teens who have been sucked into County Lines operations.
Some were placed under severe duress in ‘trap houses’, or drug dens, while acting as mules transporting thousands of pounds worth of drugs across the country.
Sir Keir Starmer has sought to tackle knife crime through a coalition launched at the start of the month.
The drive combines the government, Hollywood actor Idris Elba, technology companies, sports organisations and partners in the health service, education and the police.
Sir Keir said that in his previous role as director of public prosecutions he had seen ‘first-hand the devastating impact that knife crime has on young people and their families.’
He said the issue was a ‘national crisis’ as he called on the country to ‘halve knife crime and take back our streets.’
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