“I am a keen footballer with a passion for football and now spend a lot of my time mentoring other young football enthusiasts.

I am one of the faces of the recent borough-wide choose your future poster campaign, but my life hasn’t always been on track.

Stabbed five times, it took a life-threatening injury for me to turn my life around.

I think lots of 15-17-year-olds think it’s cool to be bad until they see the consequences first hand. I lost three friends to knife crime and almost lost my own life. A blade hit my lung and I was an hour from death.

It doesn’t make you less of a person to turn your back on this type of crime. Everyone bleeds. You are your own safety and if you don’t seek trouble it’s unlikely to find you.

I think if young people see other young people doing positive things it encourages them to make good choices. One of the young people I am currently mentoring is keen on music, so I have encouraged him to record a few tracks in a studio to help promote an anti-gun and knife crime message.”