The mother of a killer who knifed his best friend has spoken of her heartbreaking decision to hand him over to the police.

Richard Sykes, 23, was found guilty of the manslaughter of his pal whom he stabbed after taking a cocktail of drink and drugs.

And as Sykes waits in jail to be sentenced for his crime, his mother Barbara said today: "Something good has to come out of this. I am not defending Ricky - I turned him in to the police. This has torn two families apart and I don't want to see this happen to anyone else. Even Ricky said to me 'mum I hope lessons are learned from this'."

Mrs Sykes has called for action to tackle the spiralling drugs problems on Bradford's estates where a craze for blues and booze - a concoction of tranquillisers and strong lager - is growing.

Father-of-one James Cade, 20, died in hospital last May, four hours after being stabbed in the stomach by Sykes. The pair had been best friends since the age of nine.

At his trial at Bradford Crown Court yesterday Judge Gerald Coles QC instructed the jury to find Sykes not guilty of murder, because there was not enough evidence to convict him.

Sykes, of Landscove Avenue, Holme Wood, Bradford admitted manslaughter at the start of the trial on Monday.

Mrs Sykes handed her son over to the police after he turned up on the doorstep of her flat, saying he had stabbed his best friend. She persuaded Sykes to give himself up and telephoned the police to tell them where he was.

Mrs Sykes said her son had taken massive amounts of the tranquilliser Diazepam, on top of strong lager - nicknamed 'blues and booze' - and would have probably killed himself once the full extent of what he had done hit home.

She said: "Ricky had already overdosed on heroin two years ago. I was constantly worried about him. He got into drugs about eight years ago. He started smoking dope and then went onto LSD, Es and heroin.

"When he went onto the blues and booze he was in a dream-like state. It's heart breaking watching your child go through something like that. I tried to get him help.

"I remember him getting into trouble with the police once - I asked them to lock him up because I thought he might do something stupid.

"We went to see drugs workers at the Bridge Project and they were fantastic. But there was a three month waiting list for Ricky to get on a local rehabilitation programme. Anything can happen in three months - and tragically it did.

"He's never going to come to terms with what he's done. He knows he will be punished and that he will have to live with what he did to his best mate for the rest of his life.

"And it will be with me for the rest of my life - but someone had lost their son. It's on my mind, every single moment of every day.

"Ricky is a lovely lad, not an evil person, but the drugs completely changed him. I look at the young kids on Holme Wood now and I worry for them. How many more are walking time bombs?"

Mrs Sykes says the drugs problem on estates like Holme Wood is spiralling out of control and has been seriously underestimated by the Government.

She said: "We've got to sit up, take notice and do something about it, or tragedies like this will happen again and again.

"There are community buildings on the estate, but they're never open. The kids get bored and the dealers prey on them.

"They're pushing cocaine nowadays because methadone is readily available and it's taking the place of heroin.

"In a lot of cases doctors prescribe heroin addicts tranquillisers like Diazepam. The addicts just end up selling the Diazepam on the streets to get more heroin - which creates yet another drug problem.

"If it's like this now what is it going to be like in ten or 15 years time?. Is heroin going to become acceptable? Is it going to be another lethal mixture that we're more concerned about?"

"There are already thousands of people living on Holme Wood and yet the Council keeps granting permission to build more and more houses.

"The estate is at saturation point. The crime rate keeps going up and up, and the drugs problem has spiralled out of control."

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