Michelle McPhillips is urging police not to give up on finding JJ’s killer

THE mother of a man who was fatally stabbed outside the Town Hall is appealing to police not to give up on finding her son’s killer.

Jonathon “JJ” McPhillips was murdered in Upper Street in February 2017, but nine years later his mum Michelle is still no closer to getting justice.

The 29-year-old, from Milner Square, had stepped in to defend a friend when he was knifed, and staggered several hundred steps before collapsing in the street.

Paramedics arrived and Ms McPhillips watched on as they cracked open JJ’s chest and tried to save his life. He later died in hospital.

CCTV footage from the night showed six to eight young men – believed to be from Finsbury – attacking JJ.

Mr McPhillips was not in a gang.

Now, with her son’s killer still walking the streets of Islington, the grandmother from Barnsbury has issued fresh appeals for anyone with information to come forward.

“I need someone to speak up and come forward. It just takes one person. Somebody has the answer,” Ms McPhillips said.

One suspect almost came before a jury in 2018, but the case against Michael Dyra collapsed shortly before the court date.

JJ’s mother came face-to-face with Mr Dyra at an inquest is 2019, where he replied “I do not wish to answer” to every question levelled at him.

Ms McPhillips told the Tribune: “It’s been nine years, and no answers, no one even acknowledging that he was killed on the street. I really hope that science and DNA catches up, and that someone goes back and looks at his cold case and some­thing comes forward to pin these people at the scene at the time”.

For the time being, JJ’s mother, who runs the Green Man pub in Essex Road, feels like the police have given up searching for the killer.

Jonathon ‘JJ’ McPhillips who was murdered in Upper Street in February 2017

She told the Tribune it had been seven years since detectives were last in contact with her, and that the case is now classed as “cold”, meaning the murder squad is no longer actively investigating.

Ms McPhillips said: “I feel like a one-man band fighting a whole justice system, a whole nation, a whole government, to try and get some justice for my son’s murder.

“They should be catching the perpetrator even if it is 20 years down the line, 30 years. His murderer is still on the street and feels empowered by it.”

The mother addressed Met detectives directly, saying: “I’m going to keep coming, keep talking, and I’m holding you accountable for not doing your jobs.

“As a murder squad, you are meant to get answers, where are the answers? At least phone me up on his anniversary and say ‘sorry we haven’t had time this year but it’s still active and we’re still looking’. Instead, it’s like he’s dead now so we won’t bother about it.”

JJ left behind two young children, who were just toddlers at the time of his death. Ms McPhillips wants justice and answers for them too.

“My granddaughters are growing up asking me questions. ‘Why did my dad get stabbed?’ Well, I’d like to know those answers”, she told the Tribune.

“They miss out all the time. We come from a big Irish family, and there are uncles who try and take the place, but they will still mention their dad.

“They have things to come, parents’ evenings. The youngest did a project in school about her family. She had to put ‘my dad’s in Heaven and lives in a grave’. That’s what she knows of her father.”

Two years after the murder, Ms McPhillips moved to Clacton-on-Sea, as the streets around her home became too haunting.

“I was walking around Islington, looking at every young boy walking past me, thinking, ‘was it you? was it you?’, she said.

But the pub still brings her back to the borough several days a week, where Ms McPhillips sees her son’s peers growing up.

She said: “I just miss JJ totally. Because I have the pub, when his friends come in to celebrate birthdays, engagements, show me their kids, that kills me, absolutely kills me. So many people come and say that JJ should never have been attacked, he was not in that lifestyle, they say to me: ‘Your boy should never have died that way’.”