THE partner of a man stabbed to death outside his home after confronting a gang of youths has called on residents in the region to support a petition highlighting issues around knife crime.

Father-of-four James Gibbons was fatally wounded after being knifed in Iris Mews, Laindon, on the evening of 2 May.

James is well-known in Thurrock having lived and grown up in Stanford-le-Hope.

Now his partner, Victoria Billingham, is urging people to sign up and get knife crime debated in parliament.

She says: "As I'm sure you all are aware my beautiful fiancé and father to our four children lost his life to knife crime a few weeks ago.

"Since then we have been sharing and sharing a petition for tougher punishment with knife crime. We need 100,000 signatures on the petition for this to be discussed in parliament and only 14 days left to do so.

"Please, please if you haven't already sign and share and tag anyone you know in this post who may be able to put this out there. If we can raise this awareness it will mean a lot to us as a family and will be the start of many changes we can make in his amazing memory to stop this happening. Thank you so much everyone."

The petition can be accessed via this link.