The family and friends of university undergraduate John Rees who died after being stabbed in the chest, gathered to remember him yesterday.

Fellow students from Portsmouth University packed the city's cathedral for a memorial service.

Mr Rees, 23, from Old Fort Road, Shoreham Beach, was in the final year of a computer studies course at Portsmouth when he died.

He had been out celebrating a friend's birthday at the Pyramids Club in Southsea, on November 19.

Club security cameras showed him leaving the club with friends in the early hours just minutes before he was attacked.

He was walking home across Southsea Common with two friends when there was an argument with another group.

Mr Rees was stabbed once in the chest and later died in hospital as police drove his mother Rosalynd Ridge from Shoreham to Portsmouth.

Mrs Ridge, 45, and her new husband Tony, were joined yesterday by John's father, Trevor Rees, 52, from Hassocks.

John's brother Gareth, 20, and sister Emma, 25, were also among relatives at the service.

John was a pupil at Blatchington Mill School, Hove, before going on to Northbrook College, Worthing, and then to Portsmouth.

David Thorpe, 19, of Copsey Grove, Portsmouth, has been charged with the murder of Mr Rees.