18/04/2017 Midlands Today

A Stourbridge businessman has been paying tribute to his wife

and son who were killed at their home last month.

Peter Wilkinson, who suffered serious injuries in the attack,

described his wife Tracey as "an angel" and 13-year-old son

Peter and his daughter Lydia have been talking to our special

Peter and his daughter Lydia Wilkinson are being

Last Sunday, their first outing since Peter came out of surgery,

was to the West Bromwich Albion Liverpool game.

The teams and thousands of fans paying tribute to Tracey

We just poured our hearts out, didn't we?

And we all went there together a lot.

And to go back without them was extremely difficult.

Lydia, you've been to the house and seen the enormous amount

It was just a huge amount of grief, but then to see the amount

of support and how many lives that my mum and brother touched

She was a wonderful wife, a wonderful mum.

Lydia wasn't at the house when her mother and brother

Her father has two punctured lungs, bowel and

I was in intensive care for six days, in hospital

Obviously, the emotional pain will take forever.

When were you told that you'd lost Tracey and Pierce?

Personally, I didn't find out until I woke up in intensive care,

Which is devastating, absolutely devastating.

Today, the family home in Stourbridge remains a crime scene.

The father and daughter may never move back.

It's a large family home, now it's just the two of them.

That day, after the white-suited forensic officers had

done their work, I watched as this big burly West Midlands Police

officer carried something out of the house.

You couldn't see what was inside, but he was carrying it as though

it was the most precious thing in the world.

He'd wanted hamsters for a long time.

And at Christmas, he was delighted when he got these hamsters.

Like any teenager, we thought he never would,

Clearly, you're looking after your dad.

I'm just so glad I actually have my dad to look

after because when I found out he was still in theatre,

and we didn't know if he was going to survive, so to be able to just

look after him and sort out his medication is just a massive relief.

Lydia Wilkinson speaking to our correspondent Peter Wilson.

23-year-old Aaron Barley has been charged with murder

He's expected to go on trial later this year.

With any number of swing seats and closely fought marginals,

today's announcement of a snap general election means we're

in for some big political battles here in the Midlands.

So which are likely to be the hottest contests?

Well, Ben Godfrey joins me now to talk us through it.

How has today's news been sinking in?

It's interesting, I've had a glance at many of our regions' MPs' social

media accounts tonight, and many choose not to refer

There's clearly a lot of deep thinking going on.

We know West Midlands voters have the potential to turn a general

election on its head, so if you're living in key battle

ground like Cannock Chase, North Warwickshire and Halesowen,

expect a visit from the political big guns over the next seven weeks.

But Labour and the Conservatives aside, one expert suggests

the struggle for power may be influenced elsewhere.

We have minor parties who will play a big part.

Which was drawn roughly two to one from the Conservatives,

but in many areas was very heavily previously Labour and was very

strong, for example, in the Black Country.

What will happen to the Liberal Democrats?

Who used to hold two seats in Birmingham,

Yardley and Solihull, and will be keen to draw

on their clear position as a Remain party.

What voters are seeing at the moment?

Many are still talking about Brexit and that's interesting

because people in the West Midlands backed Brexit more than

Of the 34 local authority areas in our region,

We may well see a bigger than normal turnout at the ballot box,

putting places like Wolverhampton South West into sharper focus,

where in 2015 Labour regained the seat by a mere 800 votes.

I think she had to make the decision pretty quickly.

I've been a Labour supporter all my life, until this morning, actually.

So I think we're going to get absolutely annihilated.

I think it's going to put an end to all the bickering and things,

and at least we'll, by the end of it, we'll at least have focus

and concentrate what we want to do in the long run.

And with the snap election being the talk of the town,

it'll be interesting to see whether voters become more or less

engaged with the other big political battle -

the election of the first West Midlands mayor.

A knife wielding robber who targeted taxi drivers in Birmingham has been

19-year-old Mohammed Abdurahman booked cabs using false

He was behind three robberies between October

He pleaded guilty to three charges of robbery, two of kidnapping,

The BBC has learnt that Gloucestershire Airport

is in financial difficulty and asking shareholders

The airport at Staverton is part-owned

by Cheltenham Borough Council and Gloucester City Council.

The two authorities have scheduled separate emergency meetings for next

week to discuss the loan, which the BBC has been told could be

The airport says it's considering a number of options

Roadworks which will last at least two years have started

on the Oldbury viaduct of the M5 motorway.

The concrete repair and waterproofing project will mean

alternate sides of the carriageway will be closed and speed limits

The viaduct between junctions one and two carries more than 150,000

Harry Rednapp has been appointed the new manager

of Birmingham City, less than 24 hours after Gianfranco

Blues are teetering on the brink of relegation after a disastrous run

of results, and the club are hoping that such an experienced manager

will be able to keep them in the Championship.

A warning that Dan Pallett's report contains some flash photography.

The cavalry is coming, but is it too late?

Harry Redknapp agreed to join Birmingham City last night, just

hours after the resignation of Gianfranco Zola.

He takes over tomorrow, but said this today.

He's a good man manager, which I think the players need now.

Tactically, he's very aware, and I think he, with the back room

staff he's bringing in, I think Steve Cotterill's

coming with him now, so he's aware of the Championship

in what it needs and what it takes to get three points.

It's only four months since Gianfranco Zola

was controversially appointed in place of Gary Rowett.

The Blues' demise has been swift and spectacular.

When Zola took over, they were seventh in

the Championship and just three points off third.

His record of just two wins in 22 league games leaves them three

I am sorry because obviously I came here with huge expectations

and there were a lot of expectations from the people,

there were from the club, for myself, and the results,

It's a dignified way of resigning, but we have to move on.

Which I was shocked when I heard Harry Redknapp this morning,

I don't feel we should have got rid of Gary Rowett,

As for bringing in Harry Redknapp now, fantastic idea.

So now it's all down to Harry Redknapp.

He has just three games to save their season.

I'll leave you with the weather from Shefali.

It was a bit of a lacklustre bank holiday weekend, so just our luck

that the sun shone on what for many was the first day back to work.

We had plenty of bright sunshine across

much of the region, just a bit of patchy cloud developing

through the the latter part of the day.

But it stayed dry, which for some is great news,

I think for farmers, they're

really lacking the rain and they do need it for their crops because some

places have only recorded two millimetres of it since the

There's not much sign of it this week, I'm afraid.

You can see from the pressure chart, high pressure is

Even though we get those fronts pushing down from

the north-west, they won't produce very much rain.

Another problem is going to be frost.

We've got some of it around tonight, particularly

so in rural spots, where it could be fairly widespread, quite a sharp

frost into the morning tomorrow and under those clearer spells,

temperatures will fall to about 0 degrees, to -1 Celsius.

But we've got some thin high cloud starting to

spill in from the north later in the night and that should keep

temperatures for most towns and cities up to around

So it's a chilly start to the day tomorrow, but plenty of

sunshine, particularly so across central and southern parts.

That cloud thickening up in the north to

produce the odd spot of rain there and temperatures

More details on the rest of the week in the national forecast next.

I'll leave you now with the outlook for the

The weather hasn't been too dramatic of late. That is not say it's not

without problems. One of those could occur as early as tonight. There

could be a sharp rural frost around especially