Hundreds of people have attended a march in memory of a 15-year-old boy stabbed to death at his school – ahead of a tribute by his football club, Sheffield United.

Harvey Willgoose died on Monday after he was attacked at All Saints Catholic School in the city.

Dozens of people have left flowers and messages outside the school since his death.

Harvey was an avid Sheffield United fan and football shirts, scarves and messages have been left for him outside the stadium in the city.

One message written on a Sheffield United shirt reads: “RIP Harvey. Forever in our hearts.”

Harvey’s friends joined Sheffield United supporters and others affected by his death at Sheffield Town Hall to march to the ground ahead of the match against Portsmouth at 3pm on Saturday.

One black and white banner with a picture of Harvey inside the Sheffield United logo read: “Lives not knives. It’s not OK.”

The march was supported by Sheffield anti-knife crime charity Always An Alternative.

At the game, play was stopped and applause broke out in the 15th minute, as fans and players paid tribute.

Fans also stopped for a similar tribute at West Bromwich Albion’s ground The Hawthorns for their game against Sheffield Wednesday.

Earlier on Saturday churches in the city held services to commemorate the teenager.

Mark McManus, the parish priest at St Joseph’s church in Handsworth, Sheffield, said: “Harvey was a former pupil of St Joseph’s Academy and, along with the members of our community who attend All Saints High School, many will have been affected by his death – some very closely.”

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In a statement released by police, Harvey’s family said their lives would “never be the same again” and they were “utterly heartbroken”.

Paying tribute, Harvey’s sister Sophie Willgoose said: “My heart is broken into a million pieces.”

A 15-year-old boy charged with murdering Harvey has been remanded into youth detention accommodation.

The defendant, who cannot be named because of his age, appeared at Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday charged with murder, possession of a bladed article and affray.

A trial date has been fixed for 30 June.

The parents of two of the girls murdered at a dance class in Southport have spoken of the moment they were told “something awful has happened” to their children.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the parents of Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe paid tribute to their daughters, while recalling what happened on 29 July 2024.

Warning: Some readers may find this article distressing

Describing the moment she dropped her daughter off at the two-hour workshop at Hart Space studio, Jenni Stancombe said she watched Elsie run inside, excited to show her friend her newly pierced ears.

“I watched her sit down and waved her off and I left her,” she said.

Just before midday, Ms Stancombe got a call from another mother, telling her: “Something awful has happened. Somebody’s stabbed the kids.

“I said, ‘What do you mean?'” Ms Stancombe said. “She went, ‘It’s really bad. You need to get here’.

“I just ran. I left the whole house open and got in the car.”

Bebe King’s parents – who cannot be named for legal reasons – had been busily preparing for a wedding the following day.

Her mother remembers being in Marks & Spencer when she received a phone call from her husband, who had arrived early to collect Bebe.

“I was about to put my card in the machine, and he called. ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you this but somebody has gone into the dance class with a knife’,” she said.

She ran outside and jumped into a taxi. The driver dropped her off at the end of the street – “and I just ran”.

Parents’ tributes to children

Bebe’s parents came up with her name after a trip to Hollywood, where they saw the blues guitarist BB King’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Bebe King’s mother said of her daughter: “She would come out with the most random stuff. She would do it and look at you and laugh as if to say, ‘I’m dead funny, aren’t I?’ She would give you this hug and say, ‘I love you, momma’.

“She was the best. She was just … Me and her had our own little language. Sometimes we would just look at each other and know what each other was thinking.”

She said Bebe “had this innate kindness. She had a spark”.

Ms Stancombe said it was an honour to be Elsie’s mother. “Everything she did was pure enthusiasm. It could be the most boring thing – even, like, David taking the bins out – and it was like, ‘I’ll come!’ She was grateful for life.”

She described her daughter as “highly intelligent” but said she struggled with reading and writing. Leanne Lucas, who ran the dance workshop, had been Elsie’s private tutor for 18 months.

She had originally missed out on a spot at the dance workshop, which had quickly sold out. One of her school friends was going to the class and her mother messaged Ms Stancombe saying, “Have you got her a space?”

“And I was like, “Oh no’. I knew it had sold out, so I messaged Leanne saying, ‘Aw, I totally forgot to pay for Elsie’. And she messaged saying: ‘No problem. I’ll always have a place for Elsie.’ And she kept one. I just always think if she’d given it away…”

Rioting in Southport

The families were told to come off their social media accounts after riots broke out in Southport, and Elsie’s father and uncle Chris visited the wreckage of the riots the following day.

Neither wanted to comment on the rioting that followed their children’s deaths. Instead, both families paid tribute to the community that rallied around them in the wake of the tragedy.

“It’s about this community. It has brought light in the darkness, these little moments. And that’s what we’re constantly looking for right now.”

Bebe’s family spent the following week with her in a bereavement suite at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool. On the last day, her mother and father did a final bedtime routine, reading her Jack and the Beanstalk before they left.

No funeral director would accept money, while donations and support flooded in for the families.

Bebe had a white horse and carriage. “It’s not very us,” her parents told the Sunday Times while laughing, “but it was for her and we knew she would want that.”

Royal Family brought ‘genuine comfort’

The efforts of the Royal Family brought “genuine comfort” to both families, they told the Sunday Times.

Mr Stancombe said the visit by the Princess of Wales – her first public engagement since finishing chemotherapy – “meant a great deal to Jenni”.

“I won’t say what they said to us, but what they shared with us was really, really powerful, and it was a powerful message and heartfelt, and it meant a lot,” he said.

The families also met the King at Clarence House in August.

“We could see how much he cared,” Mr Stancombe said, laughing about the moment Elsie’s sister offered the King a biscuit.

‘Highly likely’ killer will never be released

Axel Rudakubana was jailed in January for a minimum term of 52 years after he pleaded guilty to murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe, six, and Elsie, seven, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Rudakubana also admitted trying to murder eight other children, as well as instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes, on 29 July last year.

He was 17 years old when he walked into the dance studio, indiscriminately stabbing his victims with a 20cm blade he had bought on Amazon.

He was given 13 life sentences, with Mr Justice Goose saying the killings had caused “shock and revulsion” around the nation and said it was “highly likely” he would never be released.

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During sentencing he was twice ordered out of the dock after trying to disrupt proceedings, by shouting that he “felt ill”.

The court heard emotional statements from victims and families, with Ms Lucas who was stabbed in the back, saying she couldn’t give herself “compassion or accept praise, as how can I live knowing I survived when children died?”.

The incident was not labelled a terror attack, although officers later found a plastic box containing the toxin ricin under his bed in the village of Banks, Lancashire, along with other weapons including a machete and arrows.

His devices revealed an obsession with violence, war and genocide, and he was found to be in possession of an al Qaeda training manual. It fell outside the definition of terrorism because police couldn’t identify the killer’s motive.

Families did not want sentencing televised

Neither family was in court when Rudakubana suddenly changed his plea to guilty.

Both families did not want the sentencing televised, while Bebe’s family believe details about her injuries went beyond what was necessary.

“The sentencing shouldn’t have been televised,” Elsie’s uncle Chris says. Bebe’s father agreed: “We know it has to be heard in court but why did the whole nation need to see it on television?”

Both talked about their struggle to adapt to a new life without their daughters. Mr Stancombe worked as a postman – he described how he would drop the post off at Elsie’s school and she would run over at lunchtime with her friends to say hello.

None of the parents have gone back to work yet, but Mr and Ms Stancombe have set up a charity – Elsie’s Story, to help other children in need.

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Two years ago, Dayni suffered the sudden and unexpected loss of her mother, Janice. The shock of her passing was traumatic enough – but what followed made the grieving process even more unbearable.

Warning: this story contains details some readers may find upsetting

Dayni was in hospital when her mother died, so it was a few days before she could view the body.

“I just couldn’t believe what I saw,” Dayni recalled. “She just didn’t look like my mum at all. She was all pushed up, with marks all over her face. And she was bloated – really bloated.”

Janice’s body had been left in the care of a funeral director, and embalmed.

But something went terribly wrong.

“She was covered in blood, severely bloated to the point of bursting,” Dayni said. “She looked battered and bruised, like she’d been attacked. But she died in her sleep. She just looked awful.”

Desperate for help, Dayni asked another funeral director to step in and take over the care of her mother’s body.

But in hindsight, as Dayni has spent two years fighting for some kind of redress, this has only served to complicate the chain of responsibility.

As Janice’s body continued to deteriorate, it became increasingly difficult to determine who was responsible for the errors in caring for her.

Sky News has seen images of the condition of Janice’s body, which we are not publishing.

But the distress of seeing her mother in such a state had a profound effect on Dayni.

“I was devastated. I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking all sorts – had they just tossed her about like she was nothing? It’s horrible. It’s ruined my life.”

A broken system

The funeral sector in the UK remains entirely unregulated.

While trade bodies exist to uphold standards, they have little power to enforce them. And the penalties they can impose are minimal.

The most severe sanction available is expulsion – but this doesn’t prevent an expelled company from continuing to practice.

In Dayni’s case, one funeral director was investigated by their trade body, the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors (SAIF), and found to have breached standards.

They were “reprimanded” – in essence, given a telling-off – but even still, they refused to acknowledge the findings or accept responsibility.

Instead, they commissioned a report from an independent embalmer, seen by Sky News, which points the finger of blame at the second funeral director.

The second funeral director could not be investigated at all by SAIF, because they aren’t a member, though they strenuously deny any wrongdoing.

No one has any overarching responsibility

The embalmer, who was self-employed, was also given a “severe reprimand” by her trade body, the British Institute of Embalmers, as well as a “strong recommendation” to seek further training.

She could not be reached for comment.

Absent of any regulation, nobody has any overarching responsibility.

Nobody is able to give Dayni a full picture of what happened to her mother, or conduct a thorough investigation, with appropriate penalties.

When approached for comment, both funeral directors denied any wrongdoing.

We asked both trade bodies whether they were, in essence, marking their own homework, and whether they felt the sector should be regulated.

The British Institute of Embalmers said: “We would certainly welcome structured regulation within the industry. The industry does really mark its own homework.”

A spokesperson for SAIF stated: “We don’t believe the industry is marking its own homework. SAIF’s standards framework is monitored by the UK Accreditation Service. We have long supported the call for regulation of the funeral sector.”

Calls for urgent reform

Recent high-profile cases have shone a light on the urgent need for change.

In 2022, the Fuller Inquiry was launched to investigate how David Fuller was able to commit sexual offences across mortuaries in Kent.

In an interim report issued at the end of last year its chair, Sir Jonathan Michael, called for urgent regulation of the funeral sector.

And last year, Legacy Funeral Directors in Hull came under police investigation following reports of bodies not being properly cared for.

In January, a file was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider bringing criminal charges.

Lindesay Mace, of the charity Quaker Social Action, said: “Most funeral directors provide good care, but the lack of regulation means there are no mandatory training requirements, no particular standards for facilities, and no oversight of premises.”

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Perhaps most alarming is the absence of basic requirements such as refrigeration.

“There isn’t even a requirement to have cold storage facilities,” Lindesay explained. “Most people will find that completely unbelievable.”

Government response

The Ministry of Justice has acknowledged the concerns raised by grieving families and industry professionals alike.

In a statement, it confirmed it was “reviewing the full range of possible next steps… including looking at options for regulation.”

However, no concrete timeline has been provided.

In Scotland, the devolved government has already begun the process of regulation.

No answers, no accountability

For Dayni, the lack of regulation has left her without answers, or redress.

“When I looked into all of this and found out there were no regulations I couldn’t believe it. It’s just mind blowing. I just think it’s disgusting, and something needs to change.”