South London's Gangs: The Murder Of 10-Year-Old Damilola Taylor | Absolute Crime

it was a um the most devastating call I ever took in my life everybody was just just really rigid with with shock it was just too appalling to to contemplate it was nationally and internationally worldwide audience wanting to know why this 10-year-old was killed I looked at this little boy and thought that could be my brother that could be one of my cousins that could be someone from my family the person at the other end just broke a new straight away that look D went to school last night yesterday and they didn't come back home I'm RAV waling TV presenter and former metropolitan police officer the case that affected me most during my time in the Met was that of damola Taylor on the 27th of November 2000 he bled to death in a stairwell after a vicious attack now I want to look back over damola story and discover what lessons have been learned [Music] since it was the crime that shocked the nation 10-year-old damola Taylor had only been in the UK for 3 months when he was attacked by a gang of youths stabbed with a piece of glass and left to Die the investigation cost nearly 16 million took nearly 6 years and three trials to finally convict Dany and Ricky predy with his manslaughter they both got 8 years each damola Father Richard Taylor has become a leading figure in the movement against youth violence since his son's death he doesn't often speak publicly now about what happened to damola but for this documentary he's making an exception okay Richard firstly thank you so much for talking to us about something so sensitive I really appreciate it yeah okay Richard tell me a little bit about damola what was he like what did he enjoy tell me about him as a boy as a young person you know damola was lovable by everybody you know he he he smiles like you you can see from his picture that he's always smiling damola was born in Nigeria on the 7th of December 198 9 he had an elder sister b and a brother tundi so he was uh from childhood from the day when he was born I was in the hospital when he was born he came came with a scream he was screaming and he was screaming and he anywhere he is he wants to be noticed you know he wants because he's doing you know good things he was doing the positive things know he's taking part in activities he always relate with the elderly people you know those who are older than him uh I think he's a very old boy you know I'm I'm I'm sure you know that that boy is not uh it's not ordinary damola was raised in Nigeria but his life was tragically cut short while living in the UK and this is where it happened peckam in South London in fact right here was where those famous CCTV images are from the name damola Taylor strikes the cord of everyone thinking back of that innocent young boy smiling in that picture at the time this was my patch I was an officer on the beat here and I loved working here in pekham and with all those that lived here I want to meet someone else who like me became involved in the story as part of a day-to-day job journalist Joyce oara covered the case from the very beginning and was moved by it Joy I did 8 years in the met and to this day the case that meant the most to me or had the biggest impact in my working life there was damola Taylor's what did it mean to you and your work in life yeah I mean it was one of the most harrowing cases I think I've ever covered I mean as a journalist you try to sort of Stand Back emotionally and try not to get emotionally involved in the cases that you cover but this one for some reason really got to me I think that's because of his age and the fact that he's Nigerian and that um my family is Nigerian and you know and as a mother as well you know I've got a young daughter um because I just think that it it was just such a horrible thing to have to cover and I I can't imagine what it would be like for Richard and Gloria Taylor to have to have gone through in the year 2000 Richard was working as a civil servant and living in Nigeria with his family we had a damola 10 years after tund and he was schooling in Nigeria as well as uh a young uh lad while in Nigeria um everything was fine school was good for the young people but medical reasons had to um make us decide on uh the movement back to the UK so the family made the decision to move to the UK while Richard remained in Nigeria for work damola found himself living on the North pekam State in South London it was an area of real poverty with over half the residents earning less than £50 a week compared to the national average of 418 youth crime in pekid increased by 40% in just one year and children as young as eight were joining the gangs that were now dominating the area he came over here with his family because of his sister and I think you know they expected life to be good but they also had a good life in in Nigeria so um I think this would have been the last thing that they would have expected I wouldn't imagine that they thought they would end up living on the North pekham estate but so it was probably a bit of a culture shock for them because they it wasn't a poor family coming here thinking oh you know this is this is going to be the most amazing experience in pekham damola was doing well at school he was a good goalkeeper and that helped him to fit in with his new classmates so you're at home in Nigeria and you're having daily conversations with Gloria your wife and you're hearing good things about damola schooling and how much he's enjoying it yes I was uh because uh every um time I called him he was very happy that he was enjoying it he told me was he has become a prefect he decided that he was going to uh stay back you know with his uh brother and the sister and the mother uh because I was saying okay let him come back after 3 months you know so he said said no he's going to stay back and have his education here because he felt that there are more Advantage here it's more advantageous for him to um you know because he was seeing you know he using the computer in the library and he was very you know you know Keen to continue you know using because back in Nigeria he hadly had opportunity to use uh the internet so he wasn't used by that you know that he was he wants to remain here in Nigerian Community that's education is everything because he was probably so studious and so into his education um though we were told that he was bullied a bit by some of the other students because you know if you're a Nigerian and you're really focused on your education other children aren't that interested then that makes you a Target and so possibly that's why he was targeted by these youth so he was just a a young boy just doing what any Nigerian child would be doing the first twoth months you know was good you know um because the conversation we usually have there was no problem until I think what happened was when he started using the library cuz instead of going home at daylight you know um going to the library it will have become dark to go home and that's where the problem started you know and you know young people of his age started um um talking to him they wanted him to be part of uh their group maybe gang so that's where the start the problem started because uh those bad boys in in pekam they were on the street you know um harassing and intimidating the newcomers after a normal day at school on the 27th of November 2000 damola attended an after school computer Club at the local library when he left it was dark out side and damola began what was to be his final journey home the events after damola left school have been difficult to prove that's why it took three court cases to eventually convict the pretty Brothers of his manslaughter Mark Williams Thomas is a criminologist and former detective specializing in child cases hi Mark good morning now this is where he died this is completely changed beyond all recognition but that was a massive estate over there there was a deric stairwell and that's where that poor kid lost his life we know where he died but what happened before that yeah I mean it's really difficult to imagine isn't it as as the scene was then some of the St the places still exist obviously his school which is just around the corner of the library and what we do know is that he left the school he went to the library to use the computers and then he left the library and it was from the library that he came home usual route which is literally you know a couple of minutes walk from down there and obviously as he left the library he thought he'd be home in a few minutes and he'd be able to carry on his life these are CCTV images of damola playing outside the library before going in to attend an after school club he then left the library taking his usual route home walking along Blake's Road damola was 400 yard from his home when he was stopped and surrounded by a teenage gang police believe they tried to steal damola silver jacket when he refused to hand it over they stabbed him in the leg using a broken B and the attack happened in one place but he actually staggered on from there didn't he cuz he didn't actually die where he was attack no well of course when you get injured to the degree that he was he was stabbed by a bottle um the impact was of such that he was bleeding to death but he didn't result in immediate death so that there was a small time period for him to then try and gain attention from somebody and that's clearly what he was going he was going to try and find somebody the gang of youths had left 10-year-old damola alone to bleed to death little did he know what he was going to suffer and in fact what pekam was going to suffer and how that Legacy was going to be left it's 10 years since damola Taylor died alone on this peist state it was a tragedy at the time that shook the nation it was on the 27th of November 2000 when on his way home from the library d Ola was attacked by a teenage gang they stabbed him with a broken bottle and ran away not knowing what condition damola was in now the reason for the attack we don't entirely know but it could well have been robbery wanting to steal an item that he had he was stabbed he then tried to recover himself he got up and he walked up a stairwell but he was losing an awful lot of blood at this stage and then he collapsed at the top of this stairwell and it was at that point that a member of the public who happened to be a carpenter from nearby came to to the rescue and actually followed the trail of blood up to where damola lay at the top of the stairwell he obviously saw that damala was in a very critical stage so he phoned three NS phoned for the Emergency Services and the Emergency Services attended damola collapsed into the arms of the stranger his last words were of reassurance saying I'm okay yeah can you can you see can you see the ambulance to Blake Road BL Ro yeah Ro Ro yeah what area off Phantom way se5 sc15 yeah se15 yeah it's a Bo bleeding to death it's actually bleeding to death so this boy is approximately about 12 years of AG he lost a hell of a lot of blood how he done that what's happened we do not know sir we' just come out and found him on the staircase he tried to climb up right where's he bleeding from he's going where's he bleeding from we cannot [Music] the ambulance rushed amola to hospital but despite the best efforts of the medical team he was pronounced dead at 5:47 p.m. the bottle had severed his femoral artery he'd lost too much blood to survive after starting to wonder where damola was Mom Gloria had retraced his journey home from school when she reached Blake's Road She Came Upon the police Cordon she was told that a young boy had been attacked Gloria knew at once that this boy must be her missing son Richard was contacted at work in Nigeria there was a phone call that came directly into the director's office asking for Mr Taylor so I was wondering who should should be calling me to the director's office so they said there's an international call you why didn't they call me to my office so they said no this is something you know urgent that I should take it then I went on the phone and uh took the call it was uh um the most devastating uh call I ever took in my life because U the person at the other end just broke the new straight away that look D went to school last night yesterday and he didn't come back home he he he he he was stabbed and uh by the time he was taken to the hospital was dead then uh everything that happened after that I couldn't remember I think I collapsed so I was taken to the medical center in the in the Department of Health there and I was treated for shock so you made your way to the UK as as fast as you possibly could appar in mind you had to come all the way from Nigeria what happened when you when you first got here so I got here and the the scene was uh so disturbing you know what I came to meet here was um a lot of uh media coverage a lot of uh sympathy sympathizers you know um something that uh I I couldn't cope with so I just decided that I want to be left alone you know that I should just get grips of what really happened and what the police are doing I was was reassured that everything will be done you know to make sure they get hold of they get they arrest the culprits and uh you know get Justice Done MP Harriet Haron has represented pekam for nearly 30 years this is her constituency and she knows the area better than most perhaps you can tell us about how you first got involved in this a tragic case well I remember my constituency assistant called me and then very quickly a number of people who lived in uh the north Peckham area called me and said there had been this terrible crime had taken place and people were saying you know a 10-year-old boy has been killed but almost as they said it they kind of couldn't believe that it wouldn't be uh you know wrong information you know that's what's being said but that can't possibly have happened so there was kind of dismay and worry but almost disbelief and then when when everybody came to realize that that's actually what would happen happened people were just uh really just shocked really um and then just appalled and uh it just created a huge wave of emotion in the local community now you actually went down physically yourself to the to the scene to find out what was what was going on didn't you well somebody was active in the local tenants Association had been somebody who'd called me and um so I went down to meet her and she took me to meet um Dam alola's um great aunt who lived nearby on on the estate and I went into to find out what had happened and Gloria was there and of course Richard was still in Nigeria at the time and everybody was just just really rigid with with shock it was just too appalling to to contemplate I remember when this happened 10 years ago I was up there and peeken police station and I went up to the canteen and it was just so quiet and there was these people that was the life and soul of the party ordinarily who didn't even say a word these are hardened officers who say almost everything here in pekham cuz it's such a busy ground but it was just such a different Eerie feeling in that Nick because of what they'd seen or even heard about that poor little boy I'd only been in the Met for 10 months and I felt shocked angered and upset I just couldn't believe that someone could do that to a 10-year-old boy and like every other officer I wanted to find the culprits the police needed to be a to secure the crime scene and they needed to be able to clear out the evidence from below so in other words everything around them they needed to make sure that that was secured whether that be CCTV and of course that's improved massively now uh to make sure that there was any anything else left sometimes perhaps offenders bring things to the location with them so there may well have been something left by them and also to try to establish what the pattern was and what the timeline and timeline is really important when you're looking at a crime one of the key things I became involved in as a police officer were door-to-door inquiries but relations were difficult between the police and the public the previous year an inquiry into the murder of 18-year-old Steven Lawrence had called The Metropolitan Police institutionally racist I felt the tensions walking the beat in Peckham and of course it was so difficult for police to get anyone to come forward why I found was two distinct types of people you had those that just didn't want to know wouldn't talk to police yet you had the others that had come over years before in the 60s from from the West Indies or or Africa or something and and that was their home and that was their community and they couldn't do enough for us they were so helpful and there's no middle ground no and I found that so frustrating that there was so many people that just didn't want to help and they I'm sure they used to open the door and shut the door in your face and said look I'm not prepared to tell you anything all those ones that you know you find out yourself I w't help you and the problem is is when you're living with that it's like well who's going to come forward and talk who's going to who's going to give me some evidence because they know what the ramifications that are they know that if they give evidence that will require statement taken it may well require identity parade it certainly will require if their evidence is believed going to court and having to give evidence in court that is massive and not something that happens overnight it takes months sometimes even years to get to court well I think that people felt that it would be very difficult to get the people brought to trial because the people uh who knew information might be fearful of giving that information fearful of Retribution fearful that they themselves might come under attack so I think that um it wasn't any sense in which the community was going to be showing solidarity with the killers it was just that people who might have known things might be afraid that they would have retribution in the first few weeks the police arrested and released 11 different people there was not enough evidence to charge them and the officers were facing a wall of Silence at the time Anthony Phillips was a reporter working for the local paper did you start talking to the local community what sort of reaction did you get from them a lot of people didn't know exactly what had happened so there were rumors going around people were angry at what they heard but also quite quite scared there just everything going on there wasn't it and it was so hard but I see in your paper here pretty early on you actually covered it as soon as the story happened and in the first first headline is why and I guess that's what the the locals were asking why would this happen to such a young boy yeah I mean that's the area sa has its fair share of violent crime uh and for something like this to happen to such a young child at the time was quite unusual so that that really was the question what happened what why did will someone do that to a 10-year-old boy in the following weeks the media continued to scrutinize the police investigation but for the Taylor family themselves the loss of their beloved Son had barely started to sink in and it was only days afterwards that there was this big memorial service that was held on what would have been his yeah 11th birthday yeah you know that memorial service was organized by the church where Gloria was attending that time uh with the children you know so yeah it was well attended you know um but still I I still think I was was in a state of um shock I I don't even know that the service was going on you know I couldn't say a word damola elder brother tundi spoke on behalf of the family my life can never be the same without you again I have always wanted the brother to be there with me that I could ask a question and he could ask questions from me too share each other's things and above all someone I can probably call my brother you say you don't even remember much about it because you were probably in a in a state of sh this is just days after this most tragic incident had happened how was it for you that you were in the public eye so much at such a tough time well I didn't even realize I was in the public um eye because I was uh I was just living like a ghost the T family were in a State of Shock while the police investigated the highest profile case of the [Music] time I'm RAV waling and I'm reexamining the case of damola Taylor it was a tragedy that stunned us all 10-year-old damola died after being stabbed by a broken bottle on his way home from the library this shocking crime was making the news all over the world police are still trying to discover the details of dala's final Journey from the library here which route did he take towards his home less than half a mile away day six of the investigation into damola Taylor's murder and a new development possibly a breakthrough for the 60 strong police inquiry team we all feel like we've lost a son many people know the family that tragedy is one which must touch and affect us all as he lay here bleeding to death Joey Jones Sky News pekam in South London so even though you're the local MP this was of course a National Crime and it was all over the national press how did that make you feel well I felt in in two minds about it because on the one hand you don't want the area that people are living in to be uh known to become a byword for such a terrible crime um involving the death of such such a a young boy but on the other hand you wouldn't want to feel that um a young boy had been killed and nobody cared about it the stain that came over pekam because of that was quite hard for people to bear just over there beyond that purple barrier used to be a huge Great Estate and just after this incident happened officers like me were posted on operation seal now what that was it was a high-profile high visibility Patrol where I would wander down those estate and all around here to reassure the public that it wasn't all bad trying to get information about what happened to damola but it was a tough time there was graffiti all over these blocks back then but this time it was saying things like rip rest in peace and it was like people were trying to help we just had to break down the barriers to get the information out from them now of course there's Moun pressure for this case to be solved isn't there there's huge pressure any senior investigating offic so that's person appointed by the police to oversee the investigation is under pressure from day one from senior officers and they would have been saying right's get this case solved have you got any any Witnesses have you got any suspects in relation to this and that puts considerable pressure and of course that pressure then goes down the scale right from the very top of the senior investigating officer all the way down the troops 8 months after he died on the 26th of June 2001 four youths were charged with damola murder this was largely due to eyewitness testimony provided by a young witness she claimed to be here on Blakes Road when it happened this 14-year-old girl gave them some real key evidence and gave them some direct evidence and by direct evidence I mean she actually saw offenders so it wasn't something that she' heard she was told by somebody else she actually says I saw the offenders commit this act and I saw them run away and at that point she gave a number of names to the police and it was those names that the police then started to act upon when you finally got told that some people had been arrested and charged and the case was going to trial how did that make you feel well we we we s a a breath of uh pleasure you know that at last something is they are making a breakthrough at least if we able to get conviction you know and see the case through you know we'll be very happy to carry on with that on the 30th of January 2002 the trial began and joy so harder was reporting for London's TV news I covered that case virtually every day for for 3 months and it was it was probably the most harrowing trial they've had to go through I wanted to see Justice Done like everybody else did I think you know it was a 10-year-old boy who was murdered but also the people who were put on trial for his murder were also children as well and one of the things um that I noticed when right at the beginning of the the case when there there were four um youths who were on trial for his murder um they didn't seem to take it that seriously I think it was as if they were sort of away from school on a day out and hadn't quite understood the seriousness of why they were there and that this was a court of law and that there a young boy had died and that they could be convicted of murder the trial relied heavily on the prosecution's key witness the 14-year-old girl her evidence was fundamentally flawed and it was flawed on the basis that there was inducement as could be seen as her giving evidence and that that inducement first of all related to a 50,000 possible reward that was on offer for her she was given mobile phones she was given clothes by the investigating officers and the problem is is as soon as you start to give things to a witness it's very easy for the defense to turn around and say that was an inducement the reason you gave this was because you were enjoying that lifestyle and that's the evidence you gave so it may well have been her evidence was correct or it may well have been parts of her evidence were correct that was never going to come through with the way that she was handled by the police she was just a typical teenager so you know she was quite StreetWise and a bit mouthy and she just didn't like the way she was being questioned by the defense she changed her story several times she admitted lying to um the police in the interviews and uh just kept changing things around and so at the end of it the judge decided that she was an unreliable witness the police were accused of offering gifts for evidence and on the 27th of February 2002 judge Justice Hooper ruled that the witness was lying when the judge said her testimony was unreliable you thought yeah it was that was terrible um but when the case collapsed effectively as a result of that you know it's it's you think okay you sort of expected it but it it doesn't make it any better did you think then that that that's it did you did you think that was the end or or were you hoping that the police would carry on no we couldn't accept uh that vdict you know because we knew right from the beginning that the police had the evidence to to to prosecute and get a sentence uh for for for The Killers I told the solic that look we we need to do you know go back to the police and tell them that we are not pleased mhm and that was what we did the trial ended with a not- guilty verdict for all four defendants the public were dismayed that these mistakes had led to the collapse of the case the investigation remained open and the police were determined to see Justice served even though the investigation and trial was painful it had kept damola parents rich and Gloria in the public eye a year after his death the damola Taylor trust was launched right here in London having read and saw what the situation in Pam was with young people and the the story behind the the young people that had formed themselves into gangs young people being taken away from parents you know by the social services and ending up in secured homes those stories um were stories that made me to think that uh a lot has to be done you know as the years passed and the investigation continued the damola Taylor trust gave Richard and Gloria a positive Focus I mean some people you see they campaign for the death penalty they campaign for for uh more Draconian laws but Richard Taylor argued that young people who get involved in crime are themselves victims of terrible upbringing and if support can be given to them then that can make their lives better as well as protect people who otherwise might be victims of their crimes so I think it was a very remarkable approach he took really the trust has supported many young people in achieving their goals offering practical help and advice where otherwise it may have been lacking my own wish is to give if I am in a position for the rest of my life those young people to you know give them the opportunity which uh Dam has been deprived of you know what D canot achieve they can you know achieve through our help meanwhile the police were reexamining vital leads missed in the original investigation all I can say at the moment is that three people this morning were arrested in connection with damola Taylor's murder they're being held in a police station in South London I think what people need to understand is in relation to inquiries such as this we the Metropolitan Police never give up two of those charged are brothers age 16 and 17 because of their age they can't be named the third is a young man of 19 he's been named by police as Hassan Jihad in January 2005 just over 4 years after Dam's death the three suspects were charged none of them had been tried for damola murder before however all three had been originally arrested in the first few weeks of the investigation in December 2000 and released without charge the new senior investigation officer came in and said let's look at this in a completely new way let's use a new Fresh pair of eyes to look at this and what he did is he sent the forensic evidence to an external laboratory and he asked them to look at it and that's where the evidence came from because what they found found is they found some blood splatter on the trainer and they also found some other items in relation to clothing and some cross-examination on that showed some um some Fiber exchange they were starting to build evidence from DNA in relation to a match between the the uh victim damola and the potential suspects offenders on their shoe and there was now a point where they needed to explain how did that blood splatter transfer from body to shoe if they were not at the location the trial wasn't straightforward the rest of the evidence was largely circumstantial and there was now no eyewitness the prosecution put forward people who claimed that the brothers had made confessions to them but their testimony came apart under cross-examination the jurors were even told by a medical expert that damola death could have been an accident on the 3rd of April 2006 Hassan Jihad was cleared of all charges the next day the brothers were cleared of murder but the jury were unable to reach a verdict on manslaughter that was frustrating with the second trial because you know you again you wanted it to to end you wanted closure and then when that didn't happen you thought okay right is this ever going to be resolved are they ever going to find the killers of demola Taylor I'm RAV welding 10 years ago I work worked on the case of damola Taylor this investigation affected me more than any others I dealt with during my time in the me damola died after being stabbed in the leg with a piece of glass by 2006 his parents Richard and Gloria had sat in court and watched two trials collapse a third trial was about to start as the years went by the area of pekham mild patch was starting to change the stairwell and block of flats where damala had died was knocked down and the spotlight Dam's death placed on pekam helped speed up the planned regeneration of the area now it's been some time a few years in fact since I've spent any significant length of time here in pekam especially the North pekam State and it looks to have changed Beyond almost all recognition and for me it looks like it's changed definitely for the better what's your views on it now oh it it completely has changed for the better I mean when I I H weekly advice surgeries when people come in and see me if they would sit down in front of me and I'd say what's your address and they'd given address on the North pekam estate I'd know exactly what they were going to be saying next I want to get out I can't bear it there anymore now if anybody gives me an address in that area they're not asking to get out at all it's completely it's completely transformed so this is all part of my old area now and uh a lot of it changed quite significantly since I was here this is all new that's completely knew that it used to be so different around here I mean for example these buildings here used to be lots of tiny tiny little bed sits it was dark and it was dingy and it was it was crime ridden and I think now it with the amount of building that's going on it just looks so much better it just feels nicer it feels a more pleasant place to be I'm just coming up to the peek and pulse now which is also the library just over here you can see it just over there now and that's the four Court that you'll seen on camera that's it you'll see it on CCTV that's that's just where he was playing and it and it is so sad because he was playing there after finishing school and doing some work in that Library doing his homework and then just walking through those those Alleyways just down there within a couple of minutes um he was at Blake's Road and of course that's where it all ended I'm so pleased to see how much pekam has changed and it's not just been a physical regeneration I'm going to meet three three people who grew up in the area and they're all called young advisers they're employed by the council to help other young people achieve their goals okay Emanuel Steph and Jackie you're all young advisors tell us what's your young advisor then um well young advisor all about youth engagement so anything to do with helping you get more engaged in their own environment helping them in their personal lives or um helping them you know just feel engaged and not you know pushed out or isolated that's what all about so whether it's working directly with young people maybe helping them to set up a youth club or helping them sign posting them to positive activities with in ever since I was 18 19 always looking for something to do I we seeing a lot of young people my age all younger doing things that I thought it wasn't really what they should be doing and as a young person I feel that I should do something to help them as there's a lot out there for young people to do and they're not actually seeing that it was two young men who grew up on the North pekam State that were in court now accused of killing damola the third trial began on the 23rd of June 2006 the two defendants were both over 18 now and could be named as brothers Dany and Ricky Preddy after previously being acquitted of murder they were about to face a trial for manslaughter in a simplistic way the difference between murder and manslaughter is the attitude and the intent to do it so if I were to kill somebody and I turned up at the location with a knife with the intention of killing that individual or I was Reckless as to do so but I still intended I'd form that basis of it prior to attending then that could be a murder charge but on the manslaughter is when they get to the location they didn't intend to kill them they may have intended to Rob them from something but as a result of the actions that They carried out the individual died then that could form the basis of a manslaughter and that's what the view was because there was never any evidence given both by the prosecution or the defense that the bottle was taken to the crime scene it was believed that the bottle was found at the crime scene and that was what was used to Kit the killing on the 9th of August 2006 Dany and Ricky Preddy were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years each when the verdict was read out Ricky started shouting at the jury from the dock Ricky was 13 and Dany 12 when they killed damola and were believed to have been members of the younger peeken boys gang even then both brothers were under supervision and facing charges for robbery and assault it's not going to bring you back no but how did it make you feel when you finally heard those words guilty well you just said it that the conviction is not going to bring back the life of yeah but uh my belief or uh our uh wish uh had been met you know to at least have a conviction and you know you know it it enabled us to to have a rest of mind about who who who did it I remember in August 2006 finally hearing that on the third go the two killers of damola were finally convicted Ricky and Danny predy people that I'd met during my time in the police and I remember feeling some sort of Pride for the officers that worked for six years on this case leaving no stone unturned feeling a sense of relief for the community knowing that the killers had finally been caught and I remember feeling some sort of sense of closure at least for the family of damola Richard this documentary is being made because it's 10 years now since this happened if anything what lessons have been learned since then oh well the lessons have been of various uh forms you know uh for me I have learned a lesson you know uh it's not a regret that I agree that TAMU come and uh uh um have his education here it's not a regret but I think that's Destiny yeah so that's a lesson the other lesson you know uh which I'm going to mention here for the first time is the lesson that the home office have learned about the way the way and manner the investigation was conducted the fesic evidence was neglected initially and that contributed a lot to elongated the pro process of getting conviction a lot of lessons were learned certainly in the way of dealing with Witnesses you know that the first 14-year-old girl was was handled terribly badly you know a lot of lessons were learned with that there's a lot of lessons now been learned in relation to dealing with vulnerable Witnesses and we've seen that in recent court trials the police have now sat up to you know to really carry out the the investigation in the way it has to be done the name damola still resonates across the UK we think of the smiling boy who wanted to be a doctor bleeding to death after a vicious attack where we have to go through the sadness of somebody dying something very serious happens we must make sure we learn lessons and I have to say from the Dam's death you know very very sad as it is and shocking but as a community an awful lot has been done to move forward from that and to try to make sure it doesn't happen again and certainly when it does happen and if it does happen things aren't dealt with in the same way as they were back then one of the things that it did is it very much brought local communities together there was a a Nigerian woman called KY and I remember her saying at a church service uh to remember damola you know dam damola was a young Nigerian boy but he could have been an English boy he could have been a Jamaican boy he could have been a Turkish boy we all have lost a son and that was the sort of feeling that there was it was awful nearly 2 years after she saw the The Killers of her son brought to Justice Gloria Taylor sadly passed away on April the 8th 2008 but Richard and Gloria's Good Work continues the damola Taylor trust has inspired the spirit of London Awards now an annual event that aims to highlight the young people making an outstanding contribution to the community it's an awards um ceremony set up for young people um by young people so we helped sort of organize it and it's basically um instead of sort of focusing on the negative um points about young people the negative things that happen amongst young people we're sort of celebrating the positive stuff that they do within our community so um we do um offer awards for like achievement through sport through music through Arts so whatever young people are interested in whatever they excel at um where sort of want to make it feel special for a day it's it's like a red carpet event there's so many good things that young people do it's just not highlighted all you sees the bad things and if something like this can influence young person to continue doing what they're doing which is good then and that would be great so with all this brilliant work that you do now what would damola think of everything that you're doing oh well you know the the young man will be watching wherever he is you know that this has been his uh wish you know uh because from the poem he wrote he wrote that he was going to change the world that it is his wish to change the world and he will want to do it in his lifetime now maybe this is the form of uh change he wanted to bring into into the world but he wasn't going to physically do it know he has come L his life was for it to be used you know for people to achieve for me I think he will be there watching and be happy that his uh wish has been met it took just a piece of glass to end this boy's life in the most unimaginable way I set out to find what lessons have been learned since and it seems many have with the community where it happened with the public in general and with the police everyone I've met has been affected by Dam's case in some way but for me the overriding legacy of this young boy's life is the positive image that's now being used to help other young people D's wish was for a safe and peaceful world I think that's a lesson we all need to learn [Music] [Music]

Channel: Absolute Crime

Views: 5,060

Keywords: Absolute Crime, Crime Documentaries, True Crime, True Crime Documentaries, Murder documentaries, True Crime Stories, True Crime Youtube Channel, True Crime Documentary, full documentary channel, full length documentary 2022, prison documentaries

Id: OMQU6AjYGdo

Length: 46min 35sec (2795 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024