We leave an empty chair for Lee when the family meets up

Lyn Rigby on enduring grief

- ROSIE DUNN

MUM Lyn Rigby has spoken of her "decade of heartbreak" as she faces the tenth anniversary of her son Lee's murder.

In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, Lyn confides how she only survived the devastation of her son's execution because of the love of her husband and four daughters.

Now, on the landmark anniversary, she vows to make sure Lee is never forgotten. She said: "Ten years without my son has been heart-breaking.

"The pain is there every day, so much so that it becomes a part of you.

"But what tears me apart is to think that people have forgotten him 10 years on. It's my job to make sure people remember him not just as the murdered soldier from the TV but as a loving son, dad and brother."

A machine gunner and proud drummer from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, Lee Rigby, 25, was butchered in a terrorist attack on May 22, 2013.

The savage killing was carried out by two Islamist extremists as he walked home to his army barracks in Woolwich, South East London.

He was off-duty and in civilian clothes when British-born Muslim converts Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale picked Lee out at random and attacked him.

They mowed him down from behind in a speeding car before hacking him to death in the street with knives and meat cleavers, almost beheading him in front of hundreds of terrified onlookers.

But what stunned witnesses was that the jihadi killers didn't run away after the murder. Instead, as police sirens drew closer, they stayed put, roaming among the public, glorying in what they had just done.

HORRENDOUS

They tried to justify their actions as revenge for the deaths of fellow Muslims in wars such as Afghanistan.

They encouraged everyone to film them on their mobile phones.