'Ten years without my son is heartbreaking... the pain becomes a part of you': Lee Rigby's mum's decade of grief

The mother of Greater Manchester soldier Lee Rigby has spoken out ahead of the tenth anniversary of her son's murder.

Lee, from Langley, Middleton, was brutally murdered in broad daylight on May 4, 2013, just 200 yards from his army barracks in Woolwich, London. Now, his mother, Lyn, has spoken of her “decade of heartbreak” - and says she only survived the devastation of her son’s execution because of the love of her husband and four daughters.

She has vowed to make sure Lee is never forgotten. Speaking to the Mirror, she said: “Ten years without my son has been heartbreaking.

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“The pain is there every day, so much so that it becomes a part of you.

“But what tears me apart is to think that people have forgotten him 10 years on. It’s my job to make sure people remember him – not just as the murdered soldier from the TV but as a loving son, dad and brother.”

A machine gunner and proud drummer from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, Lee, 25, was killed in a terrorist attack The savage killing was carried out by two Islamist extremists as he walked home to his army barracks.

He was off-duty and in civilian clothes when British-born Muslim converts Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale picked Lee out at random and attacked him.

They mowed him down from behind in a speeding car before hacking him to death in the street with knives and meat cleavers, almost beheading him in front of hundreds of terrified onlookers.

But what stunned witnesses was that the jihadi killers didn’t run away after the murder. Instead, as police sirens drew closer, they stayed put, roaming among the public, glorying in what they had just done.

They tried to justify their actions as