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When Archie Beston failed to return home on time from a night out, the teenager's concerned mother Becky checked his location on Snapchat.

The tracker, activated on his mobile, still had his whereabouts in the Kingston-upon-Thames area of south-west London. It was 3.30am on Saturday, February 29, 2020. Archie wasn't moving along Clarence Street or getting in his car like he should be; he was, in fact, close to bleeding out on the cold pavement.

Hours earlier, teetotal Archie, 19, had gone to The Viper Rooms nightclub straight from his shift as a sales assistant at Marks & Spencer.

Full of excitement and dressed in designer clothes and trainers, he'd hoped to meet close friends and possibly make some new ones.

Tragically, upon leaving in the early morning, a van deliberately drove towards him and another teenager, a girl of the same age, outside the nearby John Lewis.

Door staff at the venue dialled 999 thinking a terrorist attack was in progress.

In the aftermath, Archie had been fatally stabbed in the heart by habitual knife carrier Tyrone Bryan, 20, a one-man crimewave nicknamed 'Red Alert' due to his propensity to violence and ability to evade justice.

'It was a chance encounter when good met evil,' Mrs Beston, 45, told The Crime Desk. 'He was in the right place at the right time and not known to Bryan.'

Archie Beston was stabbed to death outside a nightclub in Kingston upon Thames in 2020

Becky Beston described her son Archie as 'sunshine in human form' (pictured, the pair together)

Archie, an ex-youth footballer for Brentford and Millwall, was one of 69 homicide victims aged 13 to 19 in England and Wales in the year to March 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics. Forty-five teenagers were killed by blades.

Six years on, although the national murder rate fell 7 per cent last year, London – where Archie died – still accounts for nearly a third of all knife offences with some 13,806. On average, one every 40 minutes.

Mrs Beston, a visual merchandising stylist, shares her pain in a brutally honest interview.

Determined Archie – a 'sunshine in human form' – won't be an official stat, she tells how like a virus sweeping the UK knife violence doesn't discriminate and isn't confined to postcodes or backgrounds.

Mrs Beston is touring primary schools speaking to children about the dangers of carrying weapons in the hope it spares another family of her living torture.

'I'm just ready to die and meet my Archie in Heaven,' she says close to tears having kept a vigil at the youngster's grave since his burial.

Each morning, Mrs Beston takes a flask of tea, pouring a few sips down the side of the shrine she calls 'Archie's bed' into the dry earth.

'I need to see Archie every day, every single day.

'It's always just been me and Archie. He's my whole world. It's my only child, my everything.

'[Bryan and his accomplice Finlay Ahwan] know they are still going to live their lives and walk the streets again. Archie's life was taken in a blink of an eye. Yet their families still get to go and see them, in prison or not, and cuddle their sons. I can't, until me and Archie are reunited.'

Mrs Beston had brought Archie up on her own since having him at 19.

At Lowther Primary School, Barnes, and Chiswick School, a top-rated secondary, the active sportsman excelled at activities including basketball.

Between the ages of seven and 11, he played football for local sides Barnes Eagles FC, Sutton Common Rovers and Kew Park Rangers.

Aged 13, Archie – a future Arsenal season ticket holder – was confident enough to travel solo to the 2014 FA Cup final at Wembley to see the Gunners snatch victory from the jaws of defeat to beat Hull City.

Becky Beston, mother of murdered teenager Archie Beston, holds a picture of her son at his graveside in Richmond Cemetery, west London

Floral tributes to Archie Beston from his friends and family are left at his graveside

At Brentford's football academy, 16-year-old Archie's superb ball skills meant he competed with the Under-23s.

Later on, mother and son were so inseparable they holidayed together in Ibiza and worked in the same M&S branch in Kew.

'Until he was 18, he wanted to be a footballer,' Mrs Beston says.

'Then he got interested in girls and wanted to be out and in the gym five nights a week.

'He planned to go over to Ibiza to work. His flights and accommodation were all booked and paid for. Like many boys his age, he talked about appearing on Love Island or Ibiza Weekender when he was older.

'He dressed immaculately, sometimes in Moncler, Ralph Lauren and Gucci, which he wore the night he died. But Archie knew if he wanted it – nice jewellery, Tag Heuer watch, the Balenciaga trainers or dedication to the gym – he had to work hard in life to see the results.'

Like any parent, Mrs Beston was worried such clothing could draw the wrong attention.

While discussing knife crime – almost a rite of passage for young people growing up today – Archie had been at pains to reassure her before his death.

Ms Beston recalls: 'He would tap his chest and say, 'My life's is worth more than clothes. They can take it'.'

Archie and his friends had previously been targeted in an attempted robbery on the London Underground as they travelled back from Essex. However, they managed to outsmart the would-be muggers by jumping back on a train before the carriage doors shut.

Despite being streetwise, unbeknown to Archie his life was about to cross paths with Bryan, a cowardly thug who had been carrying weapons since he was 11.

He was so infamous for stabbing people, locals gave him the 'Red Alert' moniker. Many were reluctant to give evidence because of his ruthlessness. He also had two previous knife carrying convictions from 2017 and a 2015 caution for carrying an offensive weapon.

In August 2018, Bryan was accused of murdering Malik Chattun, 22, in a brawl involving up to ten people on the Cambridge Gardens estate in Kingston.

Mr Chattun, described as a 'beautiful soul' and said to be pursuing a career in IT, suffered multiple stab wounds and bled to death by a bus stop. But in July 2019, a murder charge against Bryan was discontinued.

Seven months after that fateful decision, Bryan was celebrating his 20th birthday in Kingston when a row erupted with another 19-year-old, Fabian Davis, just as Archie and his friends started making their way home at closing time. Bryan got in a Transit van driven by Finlay Ahwan, 21.

Ahwan drove the two-ton vehicle aggressively at Mr Davis and down the pavement before Bryan stabbed him three times, though he miraculously survived.

As people surrounded the pair demanding an explanation, Bryan thrust his knife out of the passenger's window and stabbed Archie.

At Kingston Crown Court, he was convicted of Archie's manslaughter and grievous bodily harm on Mr Davis and sentenced to 19 years in jail.

Archie was looking forward to going to Ibiza where he planned to work before he was killed

Archie Beston's killer Tyrone Bryan, 20, was a one-man crimewave nicknamed 'Red Alert' due to his propensity to violence and ability to evade justice

Ahwan – who himself avoided a prison term in 2017 for stabbing a man in a fight, perforating his kidney – received seven years after being found guilty of attempted GBH against Mr Davis, and dangerous driving.

Initially, Mrs Beston didn't fear the worse when the Snap Map location-sharing function on Archie's device indicated he was stationary and not making his way back to their flat six miles away in Barnes.

'I thought, 'What's Archie still doing in Kingston?' I know The Viper Rooms kicks out at three o'clock.

'Ten minutes later, I sent him a text saying: 'What are you still doing there, son?' But got no reply.'

Around 4.30am two police officers rang the buzzer to her apartment and informed Mrs Beston that Archie had been stabbed.

'I thought someone slashed his face,' she added. 'He's a good-looking boy; someone's f***ing done his face. If it was a cosmetic thing, we could take care of it.

'But in the police car on the way to the hospital, I overhead on their radio that they'd managed to get Archie's heart started again. That's when I realised the severity.'

Archie spent six days in St George's Hospital, Tooting, fighting for his life. Mrs Beston lay at his bedside, cuddling him. During that time, up to 40 children and relatives packed the waiting room with new visitors all the time.

'I really thought Archie was going to make it,' she adds. 'He was physically strong.

'But when his heart initially stopped, oxygen hadn't gone to his brain for half an hour and it was killing him slowly.

'Archie looked so still in hospital, like he was sleeping but his left hand - above the bed sheet – was bruised like a cricket ball from where the van had hit him.'

She added: 'On the night before his life support was switched off, the colour in Archie's skin changed, ever so slightly. I saw it. Nobody else could. After tests, it was confirmed his aorta had reopened and blood entered his chest instead of going up to his brain.

'On the Sunday, the female police liaison officer who had been with us all week says, 'Right, well, I'm going to go now. We're passing this on to the murder investigation team.' So I've gone, 'What?.'

'That was my first indication Archie's story wasn't going to have a miracle ending.'

Archie Beston at the 2014 FA Cup final at Wembley to see Arsenal play against Hull City

Mrs Beston is campaigning for an automatic five-year sentence for possession of a knife, believing it would have been a strong deterrent for men like Bryan and Ahwan who had no respect for police or courts.

She believes by educating nine to 11-year-olds, it can have a long-lasting impact so has dedicated her time to delivering Archie's story to a dozen schools in south London.

'It's a fact that if you carry a knife, you're more like to use it or have the weapon used against you,' says Mrs Beston.

'To make it simpler for the children, I refer to leaving home with a water bottle, as many of them have one when I talk. It usually sits on the desk in front of them during school. They may not even be thirsty but, because it's there, they'll take a sip. It's just like those with a knife; if you've got it, you'll use it.'

At the end of each assembly, many pupils are reduced to tears, she adds. Others exit the school gates chanting 'There's only one Archie Beston!'

At the conclusion of the murder trial, detective chief inspector Helen Rance, of the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Crime Command, said: 'Archie had never been in any sort of trouble with the police.

'Bryan used a knife to attack an unarmed teenager while Ahwan's weapon of choice was a two-tonne van. Both had previous convictions for offences including possession of a knife.

'Only they will know why they attacked Archie.'

After Archie's killing, his organs were donated and saved the lives of one of two patients who received them.

One woman, who had been housebound on dialysis for years due to Type 1 diabetes, wrote to Mrs Beston thanking her for his kidney and pancreas, saying she had finally been able to leave home and take her children to school.

Mrs Beston concludes: 'What happened to Archie is unfair on so many levels. Me, his friends, all the family robbed of someone who radiated positivity.

'If he saw you walking down the street wearing something nice, he'd give a compliment. If we're feeling a bit crap, he'd point out a good thing.

'Now, every so-called happy event in any of our lives - birthdays, weddings or Christmas - is like a punch in the stomach. Archie should be here enjoying them too.

'We talked about death and street crime, but it was so far from our world until this moment.'

Poignantly, while driving her son to work one morning, If I Die Young a country music hit by The Band Perry came on the radio as they sat at traffic lights. Mrs Beston mentioned she would like it played at her funeral.

'No, I'm having that at my send-off, Mum', she remembers Archie replying whimsically.

'I said to him, 'Well, you can borrow it.' Obviously, I believed then it would be my song and I'd go first.'

Archie was laid to rest in a coffin with a football placed at his feet, so he will stay forever 19 and fulfil his sporting ambitions. Mrs Beston's firmly held belief provides some comfort until they are reunited.