Key Points
- Sue Hedges and her daughter April Hayden have donated a Daniel Baird Foundation bleed kit to a newly opened boxing gym in Upminster.
- The recipient venue is owned by former British boxing champion Kevin Mitchell and is located at Damyns Hall Aerodrome.
- The donation was made through the Ricky Hayden Memorial, a charity established following the fatal stabbing of 2016 knife crime victim Ricky Hayden.
- Bleed kits are designed to stem catastrophic blood loss within the first critical four minutes before professional medical teams arrive on scene. YMCA Thames Gateway Group
- The ongoing community campaign seeks to install life-saving medical equipment across multiple London boroughs and licensed high-street premises.
Havering (East London Times) June 29, 2026 – A vital Daniel Baird Foundation emergency bleed kit has been officially deployed to the newly opened boxing gym owned by former British boxing champion Kevin Mitchell at Damyns Hall Aerodrome in Upminster.
The specialized trauma equipment was delivered by local anti-knife crime campaigner Sue Hedges and her daughter, April Hayden, as part of an ongoing community safety drive administered via the Ricky Hayden Memorial.
The initiative focuses on embedding catastrophic haemorrhage control tools within high-footfall sports facilities, public spaces, and licensed business venues across East London and Essex to optimize survival rates during traumatic injury incidents.
As published in an official documentation of the presentation by editorial staff at The Havering Daily, the mother and daughter duo have integrated this deployment into their systematic borough-wide campaign. The donation marks an operational milestone for the memorial charity, which translates personal bereavement into practical public infrastructure upgrades.
The trauma pack contains specialized medical equipment, including tourniquets, chest seals, and trauma dressings, designed to stabilize individuals suffering from severe blood loss resulting from violence, industrial accidents, or vehicular collisions.
What specific medical support do Daniel Baird Foundation bleed kits provide to local communities?
In previous comprehensive assessments detailing the mechanical utility of the kits, such as accounts curated by the YMCA Thames Gateway Group communications unit, Sue Hedges stated that
“the kit is designed to be used within the first four minutes of someone being stabbed.”
According to her operational breakdown of trauma care timelines, a patient suffering from a severed major artery can experience fatal blood loss within three to five minutes, whereas standard emergency services dispatch routes hold an average national response timeline of seven minutes for top-tier calls.
Hedges further clarified the versatile nature of the apparatus during historical distributions, affirming:
“The bag is designed to mitigate this. I hope to see them everywhere as they are not just to be used for knife crime. They can be used for any extensive bleeding, for example after a car accident.”
YMCA Thames Gateway Group
The physical kits feature high-visibility casing and carry dual portraits of Ricky Hayden and Daniel Baird—the latter being the 26-year-old individual whose fatal stabbing in Birmingham in 2017 inspired the creation of the foundational trust.
According to statements preserved across regional educational distribution registers, including notes published by the Basildon Lower Academy administration, the inclusion of these faces provides the operational drive to maintain continuous public funding.
Staff members at recipient hubs across the region regularly undergo specialized first-aid training pathways, often facilitated by St John Ambulance or local emergency service personnel, ensuring that civilian bystanders can deploy the contents under remote instruction from emergency operators.
How are sporting figures and local organizations backing the Ricky Hayden Memorial campaign?
The integration of sporting hubs into the emergency equipment network reflects an expanding alliance between high-profile athletic figures and grassroots safety campaigners.
As reported in past official statements from West Ham United Football Club following a parallel donation at their Rush Green Training Ground, major regional sports institutions have increasingly recognized the necessity of onsite critical care kits.
During that deployment, Jackie Ferdinand, the Director of Safeguarding and Inclusion at West Ham United, noted that while long-term structural prevention programs remain paramount,
“unforeseen violence, accidents and emergencies are an unwelcome reality, therefore having accessible bleed kits can make all the difference in saving a life.”
Furthermore, corporate entities and high street businesses across the London Borough of Havering have continuously provided financial and logistical backing to scale up the operations of the memorial charity. In archived investigative reports by Francesca Lilleystone of The Havering Daily, local business proprietors like Kevin Attreed of Concept Windows and Conservatories noted that
“with knife attacks happening far too often, you need to be prepared for it to happen anywhere at any time.”
Attreed added that
“these kits should really be made mandatory in licensed venues as well as more high street businesses holding them.”
Such private sector partnerships have frequently yielded direct financial contributions back to the Ricky Hayden Memorial, allowing the organization to procure further medical provisions for public access.
Background of the particular development
The placement of medical equipment at Kevin Mitchell’s Upminster facility constitutes the latest stage of a ten-year domestic advocacy campaign triggered by the death of 27-year-old Ricky Hayden.
On 13th September 2016, Hayden, an established Essex community doorman and celebrity bodyguard who had previously provided personal security for public figures including footballer Peter Crouch, was targeted outside his family residence in Gibbfield Close, Chadwell Heath.
The fatal altercation occurred on the property’s driveway when Hayden, alongside his father Paul Hayden, attempted to intervene and prevent a group of individuals from stealing a moped. Hayden sustained a catastrophic limb injury from a large machete and succumbed to blood loss.
Following the subsequent criminal proceedings at the Old Bailey, Sue Hedges and April Hayden established the Ricky Hayden Memorial to combat regional trends in serious youth violence and address the acute lack of immediate trauma care equipment available to the public.
Over the intervening years, the charity has collaborated closely with the Daniel Baird Foundation to secure, fund, and distribute trauma packs.
The campaign’s progression has shifted from placing single units in neighborhood establishments to coordinating large-scale institutional rollouts. In July 2023, the London Borough of Havering formalised a structural partnership with Hedges, utilizing local authority channels to deliver life-saving kits to every secondary school within the borough, alongside targeted distributions to night-time enforcement teams, park marshals, and community leisure centres.
Prior to the Upminster boxing gym deployment, the charity had established physical cabinets at key community locations including Edge Gym in Romford, the Dagenham Trades Hall, the Rainham Leisure Centre, and the Romford YMCA foyer.
Prediction for local communities and sports facilities
The implementation of these trauma care assets is expected to fundamentally alter emergency resilience metrics for sports personnel, local patrons, and the broader Havering community. By establishing a specialized trauma care hub within an active athletic facility like Damyns Hall Aerodrome, the local community gains immediate protection against the physiological effects of sudden, catastrophic blood loss.
This development will directly decrease the mortality risk associated with severe penetrative injuries or severe structural accidents occurring in the immediate vicinity of Upminster before emergency response vehicles can navigate local transport networks.
For the athletic and training community utilizing Kevin Mitchell’s venue, the continuous presence of the kit—coupled with the visibility of the Daniel Baird Foundation branding—will likely increase institutional pressure on surrounding commercial premises to adopt identical safety frameworks.
As sports clubs and high-footfall centers across outer London increasingly face rigorous health, safety, and insurance mandates, it is highly probable that bleed kits will transition from voluntary charitable donations to standardized, statutory fixtures within municipal planning regulations. Consequently, this deployment strengthens local emergency backup systems, turning civilian bystanders into capable first responders during the vital opening minutes of a medical crisis.
