THE grandmother of murdered teen Ashley Woolley has spoken of how the family will have to find a new way of living following his death.

Iris Miles spoke to the Weekly News after 18-year-old Steven Davenport pleaded guilty to stabbing her grandson to death at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday.

Ashley, 18, was stabbed three times in Oaklands Park in December by Davenport, then 17, a classmate at Chelmsford College.

Mrs Miles said: “It’s been a very hard and very sad time for the family and we’re still coming to terms with what happened. We still can’t accept 100 percent that this has happened.

“But we know it happened and it’s difficult to accept that we’ll never see him again.

“We’ve got our photographs of Ashley as a child, but they can only go so far. We wanted to add more to the collection of him getting married and his children.”

Mrs Miles added: “This shows that this kind of thing doesn’t always happen because of enemies but also friends. He wasn’t a stranger to Ashley, he was someone Ashley tried to be a friend to. That makes it more horrible and scary.”

Mrs Miles went on to say it was important now for Ashley’s tragic death not to be in vain, and that the family want to see him held up as a beacon in the fight against knife crime.

She added: “When this happens and you see it on the TV or read about it you have sympathy for those affected but then you get on with the rest of your day and you don’t realise what these people are going through.

“Now when I read it I really do know how they’re feeling. You don’t want someone to feel like that, ever. We’ll probably feel it for a very long time.”

She said: “Ashley is one of his mum and dad’s greatest treasures along with his brother, they’re their children. They’re treasured people. But now one of them is gone.”