"It was the neighbour. She said 'Jimmy's been attacked in the bakery, you need to get round there straight away'. I dropped everything and ran as fast as I could. When I got there, Jimmy was on the floor in a pool of blood."
Her 16-year-old son was lying in the arms of his older brother Tommy, who tried to shield his mum from the bloody scene. Mrs Mizen rang her husband, Barry, from inside the Three Cooks bakery in Lee, south-east London. He arrived in his van from his shoe-repair shop five miles away just as the paramedics were leaving the bakery, removing their gloves and shaking their heads. Jimmy had died from a fatal wound to the neck which severed his carotid artery and jugular vein.
That was a year ago, but for the impact it has had on the Mizens the pain remains as great as if it were yesterday. Sitting around a huge family kitchen table in their home of 28 years in Lee, Mr and Mrs Mizen look very tired. "We've been through a lot, like any ordinary family, we've been through difficult stuff in our lives," said Mrs Mizen.
"But one thing I never thought I would go through is the murder of one of my children, and sometimes I cannot come to terms with that. I find it incredibly hard to accept that my son was murdered."
The second youngest of nine children, Jimmy, a popular boy, well regarded by neighbours, would have celebrated his 17th birthday yesterday.
Instead his family will be thinking about today's memorial service to mark the first anniversary of his murder.
The service will be held at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, where the Catholic family worship. A metal bench sculpted in the shape of olive branches in Jimmy's memory will then be unveiled opposite the bakery where he was killed. Their faith has remained strong, and they find some consolation in the belief that Jimmy is safe in heaven.
Last month, a 19-year-old local man, Jake Fahri, was convicted of Jimmy's murder and sentenced to a minimum of 14 years in prison. While satisfied that justice was done, any relief they felt in court was temporary. The sorrow quickly returned.
"I know I should have felt happy because we got the verdict, but I came home and cried and cried and cried. It had been horrendous listening to the defence team trying to pick holes in Jimmy, talking about how tall he was, as if being tall makes you violent. I was absolutely shattered; the whole trial was horrendous."
Harry, 19, was with Jimmy in the bakery buying sausage rolls when Fahri tried to barge past them. Fahri reacted violently against both brothers after Jimmy asked him to say please. The brothers physically pushed him out of the shop but he came back at them with an advertising board, before throwing a heavy oven glass dish at Jimmy's face from a distance of one metre. The pyrex-like dish shattered on impact with Jimmy's face, severing the main blood vessels to and from the heart.
Over the past year the Mizens have got used to the sound of sleepless footsteps in the middle of the night. But there have been more sleepless nights since the trial and the couple admit that "a couple of their children are finding things very, very hard".
"In the early days we'd all be sat around this table till three, four, five o'clock in the morning, and then we'd go to bed but no one would sleep. Some nights you can still hear the kids walking around," Mr Mizen said.
Mrs Mizen said: "A lot of people have come to us and said they thought it would have been manslaughter but they don't understand what Jake Farhi did. We really believe in all our hearts that he didn't mean to kill him but he meant to cause as much damage to Jimmy as possible and he caused so much damage that he killed him. From that point of view it was murder."
Fahri had accosted Harry in the past, but his parents believe the incident was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Everything about the timing was uncanny. Jimmy should have been at work with me that day, but he had the day off because of his birthday," Mr Mizen said.
"Not just that, Jimmy was sitting with me on the sofa 10 minutes before it happened, talking about buying his first lottery ticket. I could have kept him there for two more minutes and he wouldn't have been in the bakers," said Mrs Mizen. "I've always thought Fahri was a timebomb waiting to happen. If not Jimmy, it would have been someone else."
The sofa has been thrown out because it was "too painful to look at it" and Mrs Mizen no longer goes into the bakery. She has changed from being a chilled-out mum to one who worries constantly and cannot sleep until every last child is home and in bed. In conversation, she constantly reverts to the impact Jimmy's death has had on the family. Only the eldest two, Joanne, 37, and Danny, 31, who works with his father, have left home. The nine of them, including their 21-year-old grandson James and daughter Samantha, 21, who has Down's syndrome, live together in the six-bedroom house. Samantha has become increasingly nervous over the past year, constantly fearful that someone else in the family will go out and never come back. Harry started a new job with Shell two days before the attack but he has trouble sleeping and has needed to take a lot of time off work. The youngest, George, who turns 10 this week, still finds it hard to sleep in the bedroom he used to share with Jimmy.
The Mizens have devoted this past year to protecting their family and starting what seems destined to be a life-long crusade to stop the violence that robbed them, and 70 other families, of a teenage child last year. They are working on initiatives with the bereaved parents of Damilola Taylor and Rob Knox, the Football Association and the Scouts – to which they donated two new minibuses with £50,000 they had raised in Jimmy's memory.
Mrs Mizen said: "If you think about a television that never switches off, well, that's what my mind is like. Even when I'm asleep it never closes down. We were sitting here the other night because I could see Jimmy lying there in a pool of blood and we were crying. All these wonderful things that we have got involved in are only because Jimmy's not here. I don't think it's easier today than it was a year ago. We can see the pain in their eyes and there is nothing you can do. As a mother, that breaks your heart."
But they don't hate Fahri and believe he still deserves to be loved by his parents. They would like him to be sorry, but more than anything they'd like to forget him and be able to move forward.
No one in the family has wanted counselling. More than anything else, it is their unwavering faith and the support of each other that have enabled them to survive this year.
Mrs Mizen said: "Someone said to me the other day that they should bring back the death penalty and hang him, but no, that wouldn't make me feel any better. He's got 14 years to think on what he's done. Let's hope and pray... that he realises the error of his ways and he changes."
"I couldn't do to Jake Fahri what he did to my son, I physically couldn't do it. And I can't bear a grudge either, because of what it could do to this family. If that's a sign of forgiveness, well I think it is," Mr Mizen said.
For more details about the Jimmy Mizen Foundation go to jimmymizen.org
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