Rasheed Salah Benyahia was born on 26 April 1996, the only boy among five children. His mother, Nicola, grew up in North Wales. She’d had a troubled childhood and converted to Islam as a young woman – finding the faith gave her peace. On marriage, she took her Algerian husband’s surname and the growing family settled into a happy life in Birmingham.

“Islam’s part of our daily life,” says Nicola. “We pray and fast but beyond that, not a huge amount. My family aren’t Muslim and I have a strong bond with my siblings, and I believed in being quite liberal and open about faith. It’s about living alongside each other. I used to talk to my children about my family not being Muslim. It was important to me that they realised they may be part of a Muslim community but they live beside non-Muslims.”

Rasheed was full of energy. Football and karate weren’t enough for this growing young man. He got seriously into the adrenaline-fuelled world of free running – urban acrobatics in which walls, bus shelters and park benches become the gym apparatus. And he was good at it.

Nicola dutifully watched her son front flip, back flip and side flip his way around Birmingham and drove him to A&E every time something went wrong.

“The joke was that I would have taken him to Accident and Emergency so many times that he had an annual membership,” she laughs. “Very much a risk taker. It’s great when utilised in a good way – but when it’s not, it can take you down a bad path.”

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