In 2015, Marcin Porczynski broke into the home Dan Cross shared with his wife, Nikki, and their two young children, Stanley, 6, and Isabella, 3. Dan was on the phone to Nikki, and heard how she desperately tried to protect their children from the intruder, before he killed her.
Porczynski, who suffers from schizophrenia, was convicted of Nikki’s manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility in 2016, and has been sentenced to an indefinite stay in a psychiatric hospital.
After several years of trauma counselling, Dan and his family have slowly started to rebuild their lives, and Dan has decided to use his understanding of trauma and grief to help others by becoming a VS volunteer.
He shared his story with Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on ITV’s This Morning.