Shane Fox murder five years on: 'How do you go upstairs and tell a mum that her son has died?’

‘How do you go upstairs and tell a mum that her son has died?’

The unmistakable pain is there in Ian Fox’s every word as he shakes his head, still suspended in disbelief that this is happening to his family.

It’s been five years since his boy Shane was senselessly murdered and Ian and his wife Caroline are still battling through every day.

Their agony has not diminished from the moment they heard the news, because all these years on they still have no answers to the two questions on their mind: Who killed Shane and why would they do such a thing?

Ian has brought along a framed school picture of his boy, from when he was in year seven at Weavers Academy.

The photo shows a hint of a little smile at the corner of Shane’s mouth – an expression mirrored in his dad’s own face when he speaks about his child.

‘I never thought I’d be back in that hospital to see him dead’

Shane was a lad who liked to do his own thing. Ian reels off funny stories about how his son once created a secret compartment in the bottom of his bed to hide chocolate he had pilfered from the cupboards.

He recounts the time he found a line of screwdrivers piled into an apple tree in the garden. When he innocently asked Shane if he’d been in his toolbox, the boy, a terrible liar, said he didn’t known anything about the screwdrivers in the tree.

"We once bought him a new DVD player for Christmas,” says Caroline.

"Four days later we came in and he’d taken the whole thing apart because he wanted to see if he could do it.”

“Of course he didn’t know how to put it back together,” says Ian. “He was always doing stuff like that.”

When Shane was two he was accidentally given a chemical to drink by a pal. It was corrosive cleaning fluid and permanently damaged his oesophagus and he underwent 54 operations during his 26 years.

"Every now and again his oesophagus would close up and he’d have to go straight to hospital and have a balloon down his throat,” says Caroline.

"If anything, I thought that’s how I’d lose him.

"I never thought I’d be back in that hospital to see him dead after he’d been murdered.”

‘Don’t Shane, he’s got a knife in his hand’

Shane was one of three children – two boys and a girl – and it was his brother Craig with whom he’d been out on December 1, 2018.

The pair didn’t always get along, but as they got older they became closer and had had a great evening together.

They were laughing and joking, walking back to Shane’s house on Nest Farm Crescent on the Hemmingwell estate when they were attacked at about 2am.

“They were coming home, being loud, having a joke and someone shouted out of the window at them,” says Ian.

“My son, being how he was, said ‘do one’ or whatever.”

Then a man came from the corner of the fields that Shane and Craig had just passed.

"Shane walked towards him,” says Ian.

"They were squaring up to one another and Craig thought they were just going to have an argument.

"Craig shouted to him ‘Don’t Shane, he’s got a knife in his hands'.

"But it was too late.”

Craig dragged the man back by his coat to get him off Shane. As Shane lay dying in the street his brother tried to apply pressure to stop the bleeding while shouting for an ambulance to be called.

Craig was also stabbed in the melee but he didn’t realise until he was told by people who rushed to the scene.

‘What’s happened, what’s happened?’

At 5.40am, Ian was getting up for his shift at work and was sitting at the table having a coffee and a cigarette when the doorbell rang.

"I saw Craig and there were two men with him and I thought ‘who’s that’? "I asked him what he’d been up to because I thought he was in trouble.

“He looked grey and was just hysterical.

"I said ‘what’s happened, what’s happened?’ and a police office just said your son’s been stabbed.

"I asked him how he was and he just shook his head.

"Craig was shouting ‘I tried to save him, I had my hands in his wound, I tried.”

Ian had to go upstairs to wake up Shane’s girlfriend, who was staying with them at the time.

"Then I had to go and wake Caroline. How do you go upstairs and tell a mum that her son has died?”

Craig still struggles with the death of his brother.

"He feels guilty. He turned around to me and said he just couldn’t stop him bleeding,” says Ian.

"He tried to save his life. But even if the Paramedics had been there they wouldn’t have been able to save him. It was straight through his heart.”

‘It’s the not knowing. It’s so awful.’

Ian and Caroline have no idea why Shane was targeted. In cases like these, locals often pass names of perpetrators to the families, even if they don’t feel safe going to the police.

But in Shane’s case, that hasn’t happened.

"There’s been nothing,” said Caroline. “Nothing at all.

"Some of the people you used to see hanging around the estate aren’t there anymore but we don’t really know anything.

"It’s the not knowing. It’s so awful. Everything’s on hold. Nothing’s the same. You wake up every day and you think it’s a dream.”

In the years after Shane’s death, having previously put up her tree at the end of October, Caroline was unable to celebrate Christmas. But last year she managed to put up her tree.

"It’s hard,” she said. “The tree’s out of the loft now.

"I used to have all the decorations on the ceilings and Shane was was taller and so he’d have to put them all up for me.”

The family have managed to come together for a barbecue every summer to celebrate Shane’s birthday, which has kept them close.

‘Any little bit of information is better than none’

Caroline hopes that as time goes on, someone’s conscience may be pricked or allegiances may change.

"I just want them to come forward,” she says.

"Any little bit of information is better than none. It’s the silence I can’t bear.

"Somebody out there knows something. How would they feel if it were their child? I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what we’re going through.”

"There’s a person who was caught on CCTV walking close by at the time,” said Ian.

"Why’s that person not come forward? It seems that nobody heard anything.

"That can’t be true.”

Ian has been left suspicious of anyone who looks like the man who Craig later described to police – a black male in his 20s, wearing a dark-coloured puffa-style jacket with horizontal stitching.

“You see people and you think, is it him?

“And I want to jump out of my car and ask them. But you can’t.”

In the months following Shane’s murder, Northamptonshire Police made four arrests in connection with the investigation, and a further two in the summer of 2022, but charges have yet to be brought against anyone.

Senior investigating officer, Detective Chief Inspector Adam Pendlebury of the Major Crime team at the East Midlands Special Operations Unit, stressed how important new information is to their work.

He explained: “Our investigation into Shane’s murder will remain open until we get to the truth, but we really need people to come forward and tell us what they know.

“There is still a potential witness we are seeking to trace, who was captured on CCTV walking past the Well Café near Nest Farm Crescent at about 1.55am. If that was you, please call us - the smallest piece of information you have could be the key that helps us to catch a dangerous offender.”

- There is a £20,000 Crimestoppers reward for information leading to the apprehension of Shane’s killer.

If you have information about Shane’s murder, contact Northamptonshire Police on 101, or contact independent charity Crimestoppers completely anonymously by calling 0800 555111 or visiting their website. Only information submitted directly to Crimestoppers will qualify for any reward.

Information can also be submitted to detectives here.

Please quote incident number 18000581239 when getting in touch to ensure your information reaches the right person as quickly as possible