Our wonderful son and angel Kyle went to sleep on the 16th of October 2011 and never woke up again, aged 18, exactly 6 months after his 18th Birthday.
Kyle was born on the 17th of April 1993. We live in the village of Bradwell in the Hope Valley, in the Peak District National Park, Derbyshire.
Kyle was a devoted sports fan, especially football and his beloved Sheffield Wednesday. He was always on the internet looking at all the football and sport pages or watching Sky Sports News.
Kyle had just moved to the University of Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey, on the 11th September 2011, to study a 3 year BA Hons Degree in Sports Journalism; and wanted to progress into broadcasting journalism – especially football, “the beautiful game” as he would say.
Kyle was a fun-loving, happy, easy to get on with, cheeky, wonderful young person and made friends very easily and touched a lot of people hearts. He was always making people laugh and smile, always the joker of the pack, always being daft and silly; but very compassionate, sensible, caring, considerate, kind and had the correct morals and values in life. He would talk to anyone no matter how old they were, a people’s person loved by everyone.
Kyle had only been at university five weeks and had made many friends and was having football trials with the university football team as goalkeeper.
Kyle had played football as goalkeeper in the village junior football team up to the age of 16 and then with two of his friends took on the Manager’s role for the village Under 12 team for two years, which resulted in the team winning the local cup in their last season prior to Kyle moving on to university. Kyle was over the moon at the result and slept all night with the cup with him in bed.
The weekend before Kyle went to sleep he had come home for the weekend to watch Wednesday vs Chesterfield – a local derby. He seemed to have a bit of a cold – “Freshers’ Flu” as he called it – but otherwise he was in great shape and spirit and was enjoying his time at university. He wanted to come home the following weekend as well as it was the big Sheffield derby, Sheffield United vs Sheffield Wednesday, but decided to stay at Farnham as he had other expenses to think about. I wish he had come home. All that week I had spoken to him on the phone and he was a little anxious about the upcoming match but was in good shape.
The Saturday night before the match on Sunday we spoke to Kyle on the phone and he was a lot better and sounded well. We had our conversation on the phone and said we will phone you tomorrow; said our goodbyes and left it that. Little did we know that was to be our last ever conversation with him.
We tried to phone him the next day but there was no answer, which I thought was a little strange. All day we tried to contact him but no answer. Even after the match there was no answer. By evening we had still not heard from him and we were getting worried – we even tried via Facebook but still nothing.
Then at about 9:30pm we received a knock on the door and my heart dropped through the floor when I opened the door and saw a policewoman standing there. She asked if we had a son at UCA Farnham.
I answered, “Yes, Kyle, is he alright? What’s wrong?”. The policewoman asked to come in. I invited her in and then in front of us all she dropped the worst news you can ever receive: “I am afraid to inform you that your son has been found deceased in his halls”.
That one sentence, that one statement, completely turned our world upside down and had just destroyed us all. Our beloved Kyle had gone. How? Why? He had gone to sleep in the very early hours and never woke up.
His fellow students had called in campus security that evening as they had not seen or heard from him all day and were getting worried about him. He had been with them the night before in good health. There was nothing wrong with him.
Like others, Kyle had nothing to suggest throughout his whole life that he needed to be screened for cardiac health.
It is now 6 months since Kyle passed away. The coroner contacted us to inform us that all the test and post mortem results were in and advised us that there was nothing to be found and they were going to put it down to “Natural Causes – Sudden Adult Death Syndrome”. Whatever had taken Kyle was hiding.
We all miss Kyle so much – always in our hearts, always in our minds, never forgotten. We will never accept or ever come to terms with what has happened – all we can do is learn how to live with our loss.
Kyle will be missed and loved by everyone who knew him. He had done so much in his short 18 years and touched so many hearts. We love him now and love him forever.
Ian, Debbie, Liam & Shay Hancock
