CRADLING her son Nathaniel as he lay bleeding on her front lawn, mum Catherine Wardle begged: “Please, please stay alive.”
The 43-year-old was motionless in a pool of his own blood, which soaked into the grass. As his 64-year-old mum hugged him, tears dripping down her face, she wondered what on earth had happened.
She later learned her son had been killed in a horrible case of mistaken identity by cruel thugs who stabbed a knife through his heart.
Despite being in his 40s, Nathaniel, affectionately known as Natty, had the mental age of a teen after suffering a brain injury as a child.
He remained close to his mother his whole life and was at her home at the time of the attack on June 20, 2022. Sadly, Catherine saw it all through her window.
“It all happened in broad daylight,” Catherine of Wallsend, Tyneside tells the Sun.
“He came at him with a knife”
Catherine, also grandma to Nathaniel Junior, 22, Leon, 18, Ethan, 19, and Lewis, 15, recalls the day of the trauma.
“One minute everything was normal, and the next I was on the ground holding my son, begging him not to die.”
“I had no time to even process he’d been stabbed, and then, he was just gone.”
Natty had faced incredible challenges from a young age after a devastating accident as a child in 1990.
“When he was 11, he was on a quad bike with his cousin. They hit a pothole and Natty flew over, hitting a concrete post. He had a gaping hole in his forehead, and all his teeth were smashed,” Catherine explains.
“He was barely conscious. I thought he was going to die. It was a miracle he survived, but he broke every bone in his face, causing damage and short-term memory loss.
“Surgeons couldn’t put a cast on his face to repair his bones, so they screwed a metal frame into his skull down to his jaw.
“He came home from hospital two months later, but he was never the same.”
The injuries left Natty with learning challenges and problems with his vision and memory.
Catherine says: “Natty lost his taste and smell. He had double vision in both his eyes, which couldn’t be fixed due to the risk of him losing his eyesight altogether.
“After his metal frame was taken off, he was left with bad scarring and a lopsided face. Cruel kids at school named him the evil cartoon character ‘Skeletor.’
“As Natty grew older, he hit a point where he couldn’t absorb any new information.”
Despite everything, Natty grew into a caring man who adored his family. He even met a partner and had four sons. However, they split in 2012.
Catherine says: “He got sole custody, and I moved in with them to help.
“But it did get very hard. As his sons hit their teens, despite Natty being in his 40s, he was their age mentally too.
“Still, he took them to school, cooked and cleaned for them. His strength and determination were incredible.”
On the day of the attack, Catherine and her family had decided to have a sunny lunchtime curry takeaway.
She says: “We were starving, so Natty and Lewis left to collect a curry from down the street.
“The other boys, Nathaniel Jr, Leon and Ethan were upstairs in their rooms.
“Minutes later, I popped inside the living room when I saw a young man with a mask on in the middle of the living room.
“He said that he wasn’t going to hurt me and that he was looking for someone else. Terrified, I told him he had the wrong house and politely asked him to leave.
As he did, he stabbed Natty.
“Suddenly, a knife was plunged into Natty’s heart,” says his mum.
“Natty stumbled backwards, and he was stabbed again in the torso. He collapsed to the floor. I screamed hysterically, running over to Natty.
“Our neighbour tried to resuscitate him.
“Natty was in a pool of blood, not breathing. I cried, begging him to stay alive for me. But Natty died in my arms.
“One moment, we were on the lawn basking in the sun, the next, Natty was dead.
“After everything Natty had been through, for his life to end like this was heartbreaking.”
The attack was caught on CCTV and Ring cameras. The next day, a group of teenagers were tracked down immediately and arrested.
Mohammed Rabini, now 21, Robbie Battista, now 20, and a 17-year-old who cannot be named, were charged with murder and possession of a bladed article.
In January 2023, all three appeared at Newcastle Crown Court, where they denied murder.
Rabini, of Heaton, was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter and possession of a bladed article. The other two were acquitted of murder and/or manslaughter.
He was sentenced to 12 years and six months. Battista, now 20, of Heaton, was found guilty of possession of a bladed article and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.
The third teen was found not guilty of all counts.
It emerged during the trial that the dispute was over a social media row and the killer wrongly thought Natty was involved.
Catherine is not happy about the sentence.
“Mohammed’s got just 12 years for taking my child from me, and it’s despicable,” she says.
“He’ll be out in a few years, whilst Natty’s sons, who I have custody of, are living without a father for the rest of their lives. Where’s the justice?
“We grieve Natty every day. Although a huge hole has been left in our hearts, we’ll love him forever.”
