A heart of GOLD

Kathy Barber, 58, was determined that something positive would come from her son Danny’s tragic death

- KARA O'NEILL AND MATTHEW BARBOUR

It was in May 2009, after she’d just watched the Champions League football final with her family at home, that Kathy Barber’s life was turned upside down.

‘We’d just watched the game – my partner John, my daughter Hayley, then 22, my son Danny, 24, and one of his friends,’ she says.

After the final whistle, Danny had offered to walk his pal to the bus stop, about 200 yards away from the family home.

Meanwhile, Kathy had been sorting some laundry upstairs when she happened to glance out of her bedroom window.

And that’s when she saw a group of teenagers punching her son in the street.

‘I raced outside to Danny, who, by now, was on the ground covered in blood. Hayley got between the lads, stopping them from going at Danny again,’ Kathy, from Manchester, says.

Somehow, Danny managed to clamber to his feet and walk inside.

‘His speech was all jumbled. Then he fell back on to the sofa. I knew straight away that he was unconscious,’ Kathy says.

The family called for an ambulance and Danny was rushed to Salford Royal Hospital, where he was taken straight into surgery for swelling on his brain.

But he never came round. Tragically, as the family

waited five agonising days with Danny in a coma, tests showed he had no brain activity.

‘When we knew he wasn’t going to wake up, I was absolutely devastated,’ Kathy says. ‘But I needed some good to come out of this horrific situation.