Hero pensioner stabbed trying to rescue murdered MP Jo Cox has died, aged 78
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The hero pensioner who was stabbed when he tried to rescue murdered MP Jo Cox during the hellish attack has died.
Retired miner, Bernard Kenny, 78, was awarded the George Medal for his astonishing bravery during the crime that shocked the nation.
More than 86,000 people signed a petition demanding he was given the highest civilian honour.
Before the attack the rugby loving father-of-two was said to be a “fit man” who swam every day.
But he never fully recovered from the serious injuries he suffered at the hands of right-wing extremist Thomas Mair, the Huddersfield Examiner reports.
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Jo Cox MP : Her life in politics
Bernard, who shared the same birthday as the 41-year-old Labour MP, was stabbed in the abdomen with a 10 inch blade as he tried to save the Batley and Spen MP.
He watched in horror as she fell to the floor in a pool of her own blood on June 16th last year in Birstall, West Yorkshire.
He ran from his car in a desperate bid to save her life.
But he was hit by the blade which pierced his liver, narrowly missing his heart and other major organs.
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Mr Kenny’s son, Phil Kenny, a retired Geography teacher from Birstall, who by a strange coincidence taught the young Jo Cox Geography at Heckmondwike Grammar School, said his father died at 3.15am on Monday, August 14 with his wife Doreen at his side.
Mr Kenny said his father had been diagnosed with cancer in June and the funeral would be held at a date yet to be arranged at St Patrick’s RC Church in Birstall which he and his wife attended regularly.
He said: “Father David Bulmer administered the Last Rites on Sunday morning. He went very peacefully and he was not suffering. He wanted to die at home and he did so.”
“And he never spoke about it to the media. My dad could have been on wall-to-wall TV but he chose not to. He was a very private, unassuming, family man. Stubborn, kind and fair. An excellent bloke.”
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He said his dad who was Batley born and bred, was a very keen Huddersfield Town fan and had taken him as a six-year-old boy to his first Town match against Middlesbrough FC during Easter 1965 when Town thrashed them 6-0.
Mr Kenny said: “He had been a season ticket holder for the last 15-20 years and I’m glad he was able to go to Wembley for the play-off final. There was a minibus which I organised. My wife Jill came and Doreen too. He enjoyed himself thoroughly.”
Mr Kenny was far too ill to even think about attending Town’s first match in the Premier League against Crystal Palace on Saturday but his son said: “We put the radio commentary on for him but he was unconscious at the time.
“I read him all the reports from the match though I don’t know if he could understand any of it but I like to think that he did. It’s nice to think that we won 3-0 and that he died knowing Town were top of the Premier League briefly!”
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Following news of his death Normanton, Pontefract, Castleford & Knottingley MP Yvette Cooper tweeted: "This is deeply sad news - Bernard Kenny was a true hero, a very brave man. Thoughts with his family."
At Mair’s trial at the Old Bailey, the jury heard Mr Kenny was waiting for his wife outside the library when he saw Mair going “berserk”.
He said in statement to police: “I thought if I could jump on to the back I could take him down.
“I thought he was thumping her until I saw the blood. I saw he had a knife in his hands.
At Mair’s trial at the Old Bailey, the jury heard that Mr Kenny was waiting for his wife outside the library in Birstall when he saw Mair going “berserk.”
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He said: “The next thing I heard was a bang. I thought it sounded like a gun but I thought, ‘It can’t be a gun.’ I thought a car was backfiring.
“Then I saw Jo Cox roll into the road.
“I ran across. I was planning to jump on his shoulders, he had his back to me, waving a knife about.
“I thought if I could jump on to the back I could take him down.
“I thought he was thumping her until I saw the blood. I saw he had a knife in his hands.
“Just as I got short of him, he turned around and saw me. He shoved the knife in and it hit me in the stomach. The blood started pouring out between my fingers. I saw the blood and I thought, ‘Oh my God.’”
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But despite his agony he turned to his wife across the road and mouthed “I’m ok”.
His bravery was praised by the judge who jailed Mair for life.
Mr Justice Wilkie said: “The ongoing cost to him is evident from his victim personal statement.
“His actions on that day are deserving of the highest praise and commendation.
In a victim impact statement read out at the Old Bailey, Mr Kenny addressed Thomas Mair directly.
He told the killer he would do the same again.
He told Mair: “What you did was a pure act of evil, taking a life so easily without any qualms or care for all of the people it would affect.”
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Mr Kenny revealed how he suffered from anxiety and wakes “in the night with memories of that day”.
But he added: “I know what I did was not enough to save Jo and sometimes I feel I didn’t do enough.
“But faced with you and that day again I would do the same thing because it is simply the right thing to do.”
Mr Kenny said the knife had sliced into his liver, causing more damage than originally thought and that he found it hard to think about “how close to death I had come”.
It is not the first time Mr Kenny had tried to save someone’s life.
He was a former member of the Gomersal Mines Rescue Team and had worked in the mining industry for 40 years.
He was part of the team who tried to save victims of the Lofthouse mine disaster in 1973.
In March 1977 seven men became trapped in Lofthouse colliery.
All seven died when the coalface on which they were working was flooded.
(Image: Adam Gerrard/Daily Mirror)
In an interview with the Yorkshire Evening Post on the 30th anniversary of the disaster, he said: “The conditions we had to work in were rough. We never gave up. We went on with it.
“It was your duty to try and help them and it was sad when it had to be called off.”
In a pamphlet about his mining career he said: “I made some good friends at Gomersal although they were a little bit sceptic (sic) of us at first because we had come from a bigger pit and their attitude was you will not close our pit down, but that was only a few.
“When Gomersal did close in 1973 I transferred to Lofthouse and to put them in comparison, it was like moving from a mud hut to a five star hotel.”
Mair, of Lowood Lane, Birstall, shot and stabbed mother-of-two Mrs Cox as she arrived at the library in West Yorkshire for a surgery a week before the EU referendum .
He shouted “Britain first”, had a stash of neo-Nazi material at his home and had collected a dossier on Mrs Cox, who was supporting the Remain campaign.
At the conclusion of the prosecution case, Mair’s barrister Simon Russell Flint, QC, called no evidence on behalf of Mair. He was jailed for life.