STABBING victim Fynn Western-Davey, 23, had a lot of friends despite having a chequered past.
At the time of his death the former Queens Park High School pupil was on bail for an incident in which he allegedly held a pizza cutter to the throat of a chef at the La Fattoria restaurant in Lower Bridge Street, Chester.
There was police intelligence that last November he and his associates, who may have had access to firearms, had plotted to kidnap a member of a rival drugs gang.
Yet he came from a respectable home. His mum Lou Davey runs a school for excluded children in Blacon while her estranged husband Dr Simon Western, a Quaker, is a published academic.
At a memorial service held at Chester Cathedral, Dr Western accepted his son lived ‘close to the edge’ but appeared to heap blame on a society ‘that doesn’t value young men’ and ‘lacks opportunities for those like Fynn’.
He said: “If society can’t accommodate someone as brilliant and as creative as Fynn then we live in sad times.”
Fynn had lived with girlfriend Stacey Ward and her young son by a previous relationship in Chapel Lane, Boughton.
She loved him and gave evidence in court that he hid his drugs activities from her, knowing she disapproved although she sometimes overheard phone calls.
She told the jury: “He was fun, he was full of life, always happy, a good sense of humour.”
But she admitted he had headbutted her and then punched her several times in an incident last November. She confirmed her 15.5-stone boyfriend took steroids as part of his gym work-outs.
