THE MURDER OF ASPIRING FOOTBALLER CHAMPION GANDA

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime kiss today we're doing another kiss from london and this one is a super super important case i mean every single case that i cover is a super important one but this one especially because it involves knife crime in london and this is a huge thing that this country is dealing with all over the country but london primarily is terrible for youth knife crime and i feel like i should cover it more on my channel it's something that needs more awareness it needs more campaigning against it needs more education like young people need to be hearing these kind of stories so that it puts them off taking a knife out onto the streets because it it's only a growing issue here so i am going to try and find a couple more cases like this to cover on my channel if you have any please leave them down below in the comments but for today we're going to be talking about the murder of champion gander before we get into it i do just want to thank our 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weekly so there's always something new for you to find you're never going to be bored and they're very very kindly offering you guys a limited time discount of 30 off when you get an annual subscription so that makes it about 3.50 a month which is insane but that's not all they're also giving you a two-week free trial to kick that off all you have to do is sign up using the link below in the description of this video you don't want to miss it because honestly it is one of my favorite things i've ever found in the true crime world it's such a gift thanks again to michelin tv for sponsoring this video now before we get into it i do just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video i just want to give a quick content warning that this case of course will be covering knife crime which i know is a very sensitive topic for a lot of people i think it's important for us to talk about it but also if that is going to cause you any kind of issues if you don't feel like you can watch anything related to that right now please click out of this video and look after yourself i'm sure i'll see you again in the future with a different video that's maybe a little bit more suitable for you that being said let's just get straight into the case so this takes place in newham which is in east london in england in 2013. on may the 9th 2013 teachers at sandringham primary school in east london were just going about their normal day teaching classes when they heard some commotion on the street outside around 2pm so they ran outside to see what was going on and that was when they saw two young boys laying on the pavement outside of this school bleeding profusely they'd collapsed on the ground so teachers rushed back inside to go and call 999 try and get some ambulances some police down they had no idea what had just taken place outside of the school but they knew it was very very serious and they needed emergency care so ambulances arrived as quickly as they could they looked at these two boys and immediately they knew that this had been some sort of knife attack it was very clear that the boys had stab wounds pretty much all over their bodies they quickly assessed both the boys to see what kind of condition they were in and it was very clear to the paramedics that one boy was in a lot more critical condition than the other they were both in a really bad state don't get me wrong this had been quite a savage attack whereas one of them was able to kind of be transported to hospital they could put him on a stretcher they could move him and get him to hospital for treatment whereas the other boy was in such a critical condition that they couldn't even try and move him they needed to try and treat him there on the pavement so paramedics got all their equipment out and they start seeing to him on the roadside they're doing absolutely everything they can to try and keep this boy conscious but they quickly realized that it's just not gonna be enough and within minutes this teenage boy was pronounced dead at the scene he'd been stabbed to death on a residential street right outside a primary school and no one had seen it happen so the police were called in and they set to work on what was now a murder inquiry and the first step in this investigation was to identify this murder victim they were quickly able to determine that this boy that had lost his life that day was 17 year old champion gander police got in contact with one of his sisters i believe was the first person to find out that he was dead and from there it was just a whirlwind for the gander family it was one of champions sisters that called their mother peggy and informed her that her son was gone she was in a very frantic state on the phone actually she was just saying mum someone stabbed champion he's gone he's dead and so peggy rushed to the police station and she was begging the police to just let her be with her son she said that if he could hear her voice he might wake up he wouldn't want her to be sad and so he would wake up obviously the police couldn't allow that because he was already dead at this point i think his mother was just you know something like that wouldn't set in immediately would it i think she probably just thought that maybe by some kind of miracle if he did hear his mother's voice that kind of connection could bring him back peggy remembers all all she wanted to do was just hold his hands and just pray with him and hold him and talk to him but of course it was sadly too late at this point champion had been gone for about an hour he died on the roadside champions autopsy showed that he'd actually been stabbed 11 times that day and they were very severe stab wounds one of his lungs was punctured one of the stab wounds was so deep that it had actually chipped his ball and he lost his life very quickly i mean the stabbing happened and within minutes he was pronounced dead and he was so young as well just 17 years old he was born on the 19th of september 1995 and was actually raised in essex which is just next to london in south england he was from a very big family he was one of seven siblings and i think he could have been the oldest or maybe the second oldest he had a lot of younger brothers and sisters his mother was actually a single mother and so champion did everything he could from a very young age actually to try and help his mother raise his younger siblings that's one thing you'll see as i'm talking about champion he seemed like such a gem such a wonderful son to his mother he would do anything and everything to help anyone and everyone the family did struggle financially quite a bit i mean this was a single mother looking after seven children naturally that is gonna put a financial strain on her family when they're all living off one wage so it was hard for champion's mum but she did her absolute best she made sure that her kids always had the necessities she gave them everything she could his mother peggy described champion as funny caring i think he had a real soft spot for his mum which i absolutely love when teenage boys have that connection with their mum you know what teenage boys are like they just rip into each other for everything and being seen as a mummy's boy is sometimes quite i don't know sometimes boys get embarrassed by that but champion didn't care he loved his mum his mum was like his best friend and he wasn't afraid to admit that he always wanted to see her smiling he always wanted to see peggy happy she meant the world to him and he was going to make sure he could give her whatever could make her happy champion was super super popular he had so many friends everyone knew him and liked him as well he was a very likable person and when champion was about 14 years old in secondary school he met a beautiful girl named danielle and he just fell for this girl he knew he had to make danielle his girlfriend the two of them were together for about three years before champion's death and danielle really saw him as her soulmate she described him as her soulmate she saw a future with champion they were like inseparable there wasn't one day that went by where they didn't at least try and see each other but even if they couldn't see each other they would be texting all day calling on an evening danielle says that even though they were so young they were together between the ages of 14 and 17. they just felt like they knew they could spend the rest of their lives together they just knew they were gonna get married they knew they were gonna have children they even discussed children's names they discussed where they were going to live how many kids they were going to have they were going to call it marley if it was a boy or a lea if it was a girl i love like the music theme there champion was so into music as well we'll get on to that in a minute champion did well in school he had decent grades but he mainly excelled in sport especially football so much so in fact that he actually wanted to become a professional footballer one day that was like one of his biggest goals and it was a dream that was looking very much like it could be a reality for champion because he was so talented that he was actually being approached by like big football clubs i know west ham in particular showed a lot of interest in champion and arsenal he trained with arsenal a few times and they were keeping an eye on him because they wanted to watch his progress they saw a lot of potential in champion everyone had no doubt in their minds that he could be this big talented successful rich footballer one day it was just kind of a matter of time until he got to that point but deep down below the surface champion wasn't 100 sure that that was the future he wanted he always said that he couldn't quite relate to the other football boys like there was something different about champion he didn't know if football was completely for him he kept at it because he knew how much of a promising future he had there but there was also another career path that was kind of catching his eye and that was music champion and his best friend shaquille started rapping and making music champion went under the stage name chrome and he loved it he found a real passion for that as well he was so so talented if you get chance go and have a look at some youtube videos of him like freestyling because the comments oh my god i was reading the comments as part of my research and there was so much love for that boy on the internet it's clear how much of an impact champion had in such a short time on this kind of underground rap scene in london surprisingly enough the champion never actually told his mother peggy that he was making music she had no idea that any of this was even happening until after his death when she got to see all the videos of her son i don't know if this was intentional if he was intentionally keeping it from his mother or if it's just one of those things that just doesn't come up in conversation i don't know his siblings knew that especially one of his younger brothers champion would always be like writing his lyrics and stuff in his room and then he'd go into his younger brother and he'd show him them and his brother would be like yeah that's sick when champion turned 17 years old so this is shortly before his death he decided to move out of the family home in essex and go and move in with some relatives in newham in east london i don't really know what his reason for this move was i don't know if it was to kind of get closer to the underground rap scene in london because he was making music now more and more and he was really into it i really don't know his reasonings but that is what put him in knew him at the time of his murder and that brings us back to the timeline now police are setting about this murder investigation they needed to find out who killed champion gander his friend that was injured that day that was actually shaquille that i spoke about earlier him and his best friend shaquille started making music together and it was shaquille that he was with when he was killed shaquille had been transported to hospital and it was even though it was very early days it was looking like he was gonna make a full recovery which was great but because he was in such a severe condition police couldn't speak with him for a while he was gonna be in treatment so they had to try and go about this investigation another way even though they had this eyewitness in hospital he wouldn't be much use for a little while so police thought the best thing that they could do was talk to everyone at the scene that day the teachers that ran out and found the boys they wanted to speak to neighbours because this was a residential street as well there were houses everywhere so they were doing door-to-door inquiries because no one had actually seen this altercation take place a few neighbors did report to police that they heard shouting for about 10 minutes before the teachers ran out and found the boys so it did seem like this was the result of an argument maybe maybe champion and shaquille had an argument with another group of boys because neighbors did say that they heard a lot of different voices it wasn't just three there was probably about five which told police that they were looking for multiple people in relation to this murder which was a good start some neighbors did say that they'd seen a group of three boys interacting with shaquille and champion before the murder but they hadn't seen the actual murder take place they'd seen them shouting at each other at one point champion and shaquille turned and walked away so they thought that this argument was over but quickly shaquille turned back around and went back over to this other group of boys that they were arguing with and about a minute later champion turned and followed him back to go and back his best friend i suppose his family said that very much sounded like champion he was very loyal he was never gonna let his best friend face this alone he was gonna be by his side but unfortunately none of these witnesses that did see this group of three boys could identify them they didn't know who they were all they could really say was that they were three black males and that's that's all they got on these men but i suppose at least that gave police that first piece of information that they were looking for three men for this murder that same day police actually managed to find some cctv footage from the top of the road so this didn't actually catch the attack because the attack happened halfway down the road but this camera did catch three men that they believed to be the three attackers jumping out of a taxi at the end of the road and walking down to sandringham primary school where this took place it seemed as though it was quite a spontaneous jump out of the taxi so police very quickly theorized that maybe these three boys had been in this taxi driving down the road then they saw shaquille and champion walking down that road and so the three of them very quickly decided to jump out and go and follow them so maybe this was some kind of previous beef that these two groups had maybe these three boys saw shaquille and champion recognized them and wanted to go and start this argument but what they got from this footage was that this murder probably wasn't pre-planned it seemed like they just happened to be taking a taxi down that road and then they spotted the boys and then they pulled it over and jumped out but unfortunately this cctv footage although it could show us that it wasn't clear enough to show these boys faces so they weren't going to be able to identify anyone from this footage so police quickly figured that the best way to identify these three men was to figure out their motive for killing champion and seriously injuring shaquille if they could find out the motive then they could probably trace back through people and suspect and then eventually find them that way immediately this didn't seem like any kind of robbery or mugging or anything like that neither of the boys champion or shaquille had anything stolen from them so it didn't look like that was the motive it also didn't seem like it was just like a completely random kill him because like i said the witnesses heard the argument so it seemed like there was some pretty bad blood maybe between the two groups maybe they already had a reason to be arguing and then it just led to this knife attack maybe it was a personal issue maybe it was something that had been ongoing between these two groups of boys so police were now thinking well what is it in champions personal life that could have potentially led to this had he made enemies are were there people out there that wanted to get rid of him or wanted to hurt him in any way so police managed to track down one of the last people to speak to champion on the day of his murder and that was his friend junior but junior said that everything seemed fine with champion it was just a normal day for him he didn't seem anxious or worried or scared or angry it didn't seem like he was in the middle of anything it didn't seem like anything was brewing for him in his life champion was just being his normal self he was talking about his music with junior junior did ask champion however if there was any beef going on at the moment in the scene because in the underground rap scene in london there's always little like feuds and little disses here and there like there's always some kind of beef but champion actually said to junior he was like nah not for me i'm not in anything all i'm focused on is like making music making money setting myself up a good career just a side note about junior by the way i don't know where else to slip this in but junior actually only lived a few streets away from where champion was murdered outside that primary school and he had to walk that street almost every day to get to like work or school or whatever junior actually told an mtv documentary crew that for six months following champion's murder his blood stain was still on the pavement outside of that primary school there's kids playing in the playground literally just feet away from a murder scene it's just it's awful it seems like it can't be real life so anyway after this conversation that the police had with junior they decided it would probably be a good idea to look into champions rap career and that whole scene since it seemed like there was always conflict because the rap scene in london goes way beyond just music there's rivalries competition people rap about like real stuff whether it's personal stuff or beef or like real crimes that they've committed you know people are a little bit too honest on tracks sometimes and so that's when stuff really starts to go sour when one of your rivals hears that you've said a certain thing in a song you know what i mean people take stuff really really seriously really really personally and they feel the need to fight to defend themselves and their art and their career and this wouldn't be the first time that violence has stemmed from the music scene in london this underground rap scene in london it's actually painfully common there's so many court cases where like music videos are used as evidence all these boys waving around knives and stuff that is then used in a court case against them when they commit a crime because they voluntarily put that on the internet that they are in possession of such weapons it's like they do it to themselves they bring it upon themselves but they feel like they have to because they're caught up in that in that scene everyone's like that in that scene if you're not showcasing weapons in your video then it's a crap video i mean obviously i don't think that but that's kind of what the general consensus is in that kind of scene if it doesn't have all these kind of brutal elements to it and you don't seem really edgy and like dark and mysterious and violent then you're no one you know that's all your reputation it's just quite a cutthroat industry in general where you kind of have your people you have your group the people that you work with well but then outside of that no one is your friend everyone is competition everyone's always butting heads with each other and champion himself even wrapped in certain freestyles saying things like how he'd back his boys no matter what it's do or die for his boys and so police are hearing this and they're thinking well what if there's truth in that what if that is genuinely what has happened what if he was back in shaquille so much that it led to this to a very serious knife attack where he lost his life all because he was backing his boy so police asked a bunch of champions friends family if this could have any truth to it they were like is he the kind of guy that would do this that would go so far to back his best friend that he would lose his life over it and all of his family were saying well no everyone always says that kind of stuff in songs but does anyone really mean it probably not it's just like a rap persona that a lot of people put on people said yeah champion was very very loyal but would he be willing to die over an argument probably not i don't think anyone would really people just rapped about maybe not necessarily violence that they would commit themselves but they would rap about the violence that they saw in the streets and champions saw a lot of violence growing up he'd never really resorted to any of it himself though champion was a very good guy he tried to stay out of things like that he wasn't so easily swept up in that kind of life but he did like to rap about it in his songs and freestyles because that was just kind of the scene that he lived in it was it was a very big cultural thing in that rap scene i suppose to rap about the violence on the streets you rap about carrying your weapons you rap about backing your boys and fighting people and like pulling a knife and stuff but it's just kind of what rappers did they rap about the weapons that they carry they rap about the feuds that they get into some of it's real but sometimes it's not and that's the thing it's kind of hard to decipher what's all just talk and what's actually going on so the police are now thinking well maybe it wasn't champion that started this maybe champion didn't go out and seek violence but maybe it was someone in that music industry maybe someone that saw champion as a bit of competition maybe they heard champion songs heard the things that he rapped about and thought oh this guy thinks he's tough i'm gonna go and give him a run for his money i'm gonna pull up and and fight him but before police could even get any further in that line of inquiry they received a phone call from a very anxious teenage boy thinking that he just saw the murderer this was maybe a day or two after the murderer this 14 year old boy was in a kfc in that kind of area of london when some older boys came into the kfc and they were talking very openly very explicitly about champions murder i don't know exactly what was said i have some brief quotes and i don't know if these are actually like reworded i don't know if this is word for word but they said they jumped out of the taxi and the knife was looking bloody and this very scared 14 year old boy was sure that he had just heard the murderers talking about this murder that they just committed and so he very very bravely got in contact with the police himself to give this information over and i can't imagine how hard that must have been for a 14 year old boy you know that these older boys are capable of murder but he still did what was right and i think that's amazing of course by the time he did tell the police he didn't ring them then and there in the kfc that would have been way too dangerous for him i think he waited until a little bit later so of course by the time police found out about this the older boys were long gone from the kfc so they weren't able to go down and arrest those exact people but they did have the kfc cctv footage to be able to compare to the cctv footage that they got from the top of the street they were gonna compare things like body language um heights kind of weight and build how these men held themselves so that they could say for sure if they were the same people the kfc cctv footage still wasn't very good so it wasn't good enough to be able to do like facial identification but being able to compare was good enough i suppose it was better than what they had at the moment and when a professional put both cctv footage things next to each other they told the police that that is absolutely the same group of three boys so from this point police used a bunch of different techniques i don't know exactly what they did i don't know if they went through like the credit card that was used to buy the meals at kfc or something like that but they were able to identify these three boys the first one was 16 year old amani lynch and amani lynch was very well known to the police and he's so young as well he's 16 years old and he's already well known to the police he was known for possession of drugs dealing drugs different violence charges he was also in a gang in forest gate so he was a gang member at the age of 16 and this gang that he was in was called custom house i think it's one of the biggest gangs in east london it's pretty notorious and very very scary custom house are known for stabbings shootings literally like everything you can imagine and amani had been a part of this gang since he was like 12 13 years old a 12 year old boy already in the gang life it's actually quite heartbreaking to think about because it's almost as if he never even got a fair enough chance to live a normal law-abiding life amani's father wasn't in his life and i think his mother struggled on so many different levels to to raise him she struggled financially emotionally because that is a lot of a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility and a lot of energy that is taken from you when you are a single parent and so i think that is why amani turned to gang life so young at the age of like 12 or 13 for some belonging he wanted to feel like he had loads of older brothers i think he really fit in there because you know they all had his back they were all willing to to help raise this kid someone that knew amani lynch actually told the police a couple of months before this murder took place so this is before champion was even murdered amani had been saying stuff like i think something's gonna happen soon there's not enough for us to do so people are fighting i think someone's gonna get hurt he didn't mention anyone or anything in specific but it's very clear where his mind was going there is not enough for the youth of london to do everything is too expensive there's nothing entertaining them or occupying their days and so that boredom is going to lead to violence and arguments and fights eventually because that is the main thing that's going on on the streets of london so it's very clear what kind of mindset amani was in he could see this coming he was so bored that he knew eventually that this gang life was just gonna consume him and he was going to become violent because he had nothing else to do so police wasted no time and they went right down to amani's address in leighton which is in north east london and they arrested him one of the first things police did was actually seize his phone because they were still trying to identify those other two boys they were pretty sure that amani was one of the three but there were two other potential murderers still out there so they got his phone they were looking through like texts and call logs and stuff and they very quickly found some incriminating texts between him and two of the boys and immediately police believed that these other two boys had to be the other two from the cctv footage they now had all three of them these other two boys were 17 year old marvin simos and 18 year old devonte clifford but tracking these other two boys down was not gonna be as easy as it was to track down amani they just went straight to manny's house and there he was and they arrested him so they tried to do that for marvin they got to his house he wasn't there although it didn't take police long to track him down and they found that he was actually hiding out at someone's house in east sussex so he tried to run away and hide which certainly tells us something doesn't it he was arrested there in east sussex and he was brought back to the police station in london for questioning devante clifford the third boy was actually the hardest to track down an arrest and they didn't actually manage to do it for three years because he had actually gone out of the country entirely he'd gone to saint lucia in the caribbean so they knew it was going to be a big task to essentially extradite him and get him back to the uk that was going to be huge huge huge so in the meantime they actually just focused on the other two boys amani and marvin by this point in the case i think it had been about five or six days since the actual attack took place this all happened very quickly and shaquille the boy that was also attacked and severely injured he was almost fully recovered at this point he was still in hospital but he had all his stitches he was good so police decided to try and utilize him in the investigation they went in they interviewed him and shaquille was quite um i don't know how to wear this he wasn't giving them much information at all he said that he didn't see who attacked him he didn't see anything he didn't know anything he couldn't tell police anything but police weren't believing him they didn't believe that he hadn't seen the attacker i mean there'd been an argument going on for 10 minutes before it of course he'd seen who had done this but it seemed that shaquille wasn't handing over that information to the police for a reason maybe he was too scared to say anything to police in case they came back for him it seemed like he had only just gotten away with his life there was always the chance that he could make them angry and they could come back for him so police decided to just try with him anyway they told him all three suspect names and they just said do you recognize those names do they mean anything to you shaquille said he did recognize those names but he couldn't quite pinpoint where he knew them from probably just like the streets and that kind of scene those circles you would hear people's names he said he went to school with amani lynch but other than that he didn't really know the boys so police decided to put all three of the suspects in a lineup with a bunch of other men and they brought shaquille in to have a look at this lineup he looked at the whole thing and he turned to police and said i don't know any of these i don't know any of these men he didn't pick anyone out of the lineup even though it was two of the boys because devonta was obviously still in saint lucia but marvin and amani were in this lineup he'd been to school with amani how did he not recognize him in the lineup again police found it very hard to believe that he didn't recognize his attacker in this lineup there was definitely something going on here like shaquille was definitely holding back and without this evidence of a lineup like if shaquille would have said yes it was amani yes it was marvin they'd be able to like properly charge those boys but because shaquille hadn't said anything they didn't have any solid evidence against amani and marvin so they had to just let them go so the two of them were released on bail even though police knew that they were looking in the right direction they were pretty sure that it was these two boys they just needed shaquille to confirm this and he wasn't confirming it police begged and pleaded with shaquille to just cooperate you know just just help them just help them put these guys down because right now they're back out on the street ready to commit some more violence some more life-threatening knife crimes but shaquille honestly was just maintaining the story that he didn't see who did it he didn't know who did it he didn't recognize any of those men he was just saying the same thing and police understood you know it's such a shame that people feel they can't give over this information but if they feel like their life is in danger especially being seen as a snitch in those kind of scenes can be so dangerous being seen as a snitch can make you lose your life in some circles you can get killed for being a snitch so it is understandable that he wouldn't give over this information but it is such a shame even if you're not killed for being a snitch your reputation is completely ruined you'll be shunned out of certain circles no one wants to hang around with a snitch i mean in this day and age in 2021 police have started putting certain things in place that mean that people can give over that kind of information and it won't be a danger to them but at the time in 2013 i doubt any of these things would have been in place so i bet shaquille felt very unable to to say those kind of things because he felt it would come back around for him in the streets people understood but at the same time his best friend was murdered standing next to him and people were just a little bit disappointed that shaquille couldn't help to solve his best friend's murder he was being quite uncooperative peggy champion's mother said that she wasn't actually surprised that shaquille was uncooperative in this investigation she said she'd never really liked him the whole time that he and champion had been friends it wasn't anything big that he'd done she didn't really know why she didn't like shaquille she couldn't pinpoint the reason but there'd always been something off about the boy she said he was always a polite nice boy so she couldn't really understand why she felt that way about him but it was definitely some level of mother's intuition because now she was seeing that side to him she always just felt like he wasn't fully there for champion and now that he had literally been murdered and shaquille knew who did it he wasn't giving that information over to the police she always just felt like shaquille was bad news there was just always something i mean a couple of years into his and champions friendship there was an incident that made his mother see this side of shaquille and this incident well it turned out that champion's murder wasn't the first time he'd been a victim of knife crime a year before his murder when champion was 16 years old he'd been out with his friend shaquille there were a bunch of other people there i don't know the exact circumstances of this event because none of them not shaquille not champion not any of the other people there have ever told anyone what fully happened that day but at some point another group of boys came over to them an altercation broke out and a knife was pulled this ended with champion gander being stabbed in the leg just once it wasn't that severe of a stab wound but it was still a stab wound he'd still been stabbed at 16 years old on the streets of london he was rushed to hospital it was stitched up he was fine it wouldn't cause any long-term or life-threatening issues for him um champion's mum was informed of this by champion's girlfriend's mother but nobody ever told her why her son was stabbed not even champion champion never told his mum why or how that happened which must have been so scary for a mother to know that your son is out on the streets in those kind of scenes and you don't even know what's going on but following this incident when champion was stabbed after he recovered he acted very much how shaquille was acting now champion didn't go to the police he didn't give in any names or anything he didn't snitch on anyone he just recovered and moved on and completely forgot about it never really talked about it again that was just how people went about things in that scene so maybe that tells us a little bit more about why shaquille was doing that maybe he felt like that was what champion would have wanted or what champion would have done in that situation who knows so anyway police hear this about this incident that happened a year before when champion was stabbed in the leg and they think oh well maybe these are connected maybe it's the same boys that have come back a second time and finally murdered him maybe it was like an ongoing feud between shaquille and champion and this other group of boys so police looked into it further but this theory didn't hold up very long it turned out that the group of people that had stabbed champion in the leg when he was 16 that was a group of white guys whereas every piece of information relating to champions murder said that the suspects were black there were all the neighbours that witnessed shaquille and champion arguing with a group of three black boys there was the cctv footage as well of course that showed that these three boys weren't white so that theory that these two events were linked was very quickly ruled out although it is very scary to see how much violence was just always in champion's life and the scariest part is that champion didn't seek it out he was not a violent type i think it just followed him just due to the circles that he was in and due to the friends that he had there was talk of potential gang activity being the cause of champions murder maybe not champion himself being in a gang no one thinks that but maybe a certain gang didn't like him for some reason or maybe he was friends with someone in a gang and then it was their beef and champion just got swept up in it or something like that and this theory was very quickly confirmed when police received intelligence that champion's best friend shaquille was actually in a gang shaquille was a gang member and this opened up the very probable motive now that maybe champion wasn't the target that day maybe shaquille was the main target for this attack maybe they'd gotten out of that taxi these three suspects had gotten out of the taxi to go and fight shaquille that would explain why when the boys walked away it was shaquille that walked back over to the argument because it was his argument to be having and then champion only followed to back his friend maybe those people had wanted to stab shaquille and maybe champion was just there in the wrong place at the wrong time and they attacked him too the gang that shaquille was in was called the blood city gang and champion's girlfriend danielle maintains that champion was never in a gang he never even crossed into that part of shaquille's life that was separate in shaquille's life champion had his life and they would kind of meet in the middle champion would never go and meet shaquille when he was with his gang or when he was doing anything like that danielle says that champion was literally just living his life he was just out to have fun he was never causing issues for anyone he was just a nice guy there was a theory when this whole gang motive was brought up that maybe champion and shaquille on the day of champions murder maybe they'd walked into a gang's territory by accident without realizing and then they were in the grasps of that gang that gang came and attacked them because a lot of gang activity in london is determined by postcards they have postcode rivalries so particular areas people from particular areas don't like other people coming into their area because it's their territory it's quite a scary concept that you could just walk into the wrong part of london and then you could be attacked for being in someone else's territory so there was this theory suggested that maybe this area by the primary school that they walked into was maybe a marnie lynch's gang custom house maybe that was their area and maybe shaquille's gang was in opposition to custom house maybe blood city and custom house didn't like each other and then as soon as amani saw shaquille of blood city gang in his area that was when this attack happened so police investigated this theory further but it was very quickly realized that amani lynch's custom house gang actually operated a lot further south than where the murder took place so it was unlikely that shaquille and champion just wandered accidentally into the wrong place that didn't happen but that didn't rule out the gang theory entirely i mean maybe amani lynch of custom house gang went out and found shaquille he didn't have to just wait for shaquille to wander into his territory so police decided to see if there might have been any previous beef between custom house and blood city gang or even more specifically shaquille and amani and that was when they hit the jackpot in terms of evidence and theories and material for this investigation just three days before the murder so the murder took place on may 9th but on may 6 2013 shaquille had been arrested for stabbing a member of the custom house gang shaquille had been arrested for a stabbing so this proved that both of these gangs blood city and custom house were at war they were each other's rivals it was getting physical and violent knives were now introduced so it seems that champion's murder and the attack on shaquille at the same time were just the next steps in this rivalry maybe custom house were trying to get some revenge on the blood city gang aka shaquille of blood city for what he'd done to a member of their guy police found that these two gangs had been at war for years now and of course shaquille and amani went to school together and while they'd never like physically fought each other i don't think there'd always been some kind of conflict you know they've never fully gotten on shaquille and amani in school at the time that shaquille stabbed this custom house gang member police did start looking into it but they really didn't get much chance to look into it until this happened three days later by the time they'd gathered all the information to go and arrest shaquille for this stabbing he was in hospital himself for being stabbed but it turned out that the person that shaquille had stabbed from the custom house gang was actually a very close friend of the three suspects amani devante and marvin the stabbing victim himself didn't want to press charges against shaquille obviously this kind of nurse niching culture gangs very much like to deal with things on their own terms they don't want to go through the police they would much rather get physical revenge on the person that has wronged them and so maybe that's what's happened here maybe amani devonte and marvin were trying to get revenge for their friend from their gang so they went out after shaquille that is the strongest theory they have for a motive here and it just seemed as though champion gander was just with his friend and he was loyal to his friend and he was willing to fight with his friend little did he know that it was gonna be that that lost him his life so police spoke with the suspects a little bit further i mean they only had amani and marvin still at this point in time but through these questionings and through all the witness statements police were able to pull together a bit of a theorized version of events so i'm going to run you through that now this is what they believed happened on the day but i do just want to prepare you they do have very limited information obviously with the nurse snitching culture they don't have details so this is as good as it gets normally we get quite a detailed theorized version of events but here it's very basic so it turned out that marvin simos was actually on his way to the forest gate police station that day i think because he'd committed a crime a couple of weeks prior he was going down to do some paperwork or something appeal or apply for something but he didn't want to go alone he decided to bring his two best friends amani lynch and devante clifford so that is what put all three of those boys in the taxi on the way to forrest gate police station on the day that champions murder took place so they were in this taxi going down the road and it's believed that one of these boys turned and looked out of the window when they saw shaquille and champion walking down this road down by sandringham primary and as soon as the men spotted shaquille they recognized him as the guy that had just stabbed their friend their gang member friend and so immediately they decided to stop this taxi let's get out we're gonna go and confront that guy so they stopped the taxi they jumped out they all ran down this road after champion and shaquille they're shouting screaming this argument takes place and it very very quickly snowballs out of control one of the suspects produced a knife i believe that one was amani lynch i can't say for sure because i don't actually know but i believe it was a manny lynch that had the knife there are a few other reports that say one of them had a hammer although i don't know how true that is so take that with a pinch of salt and also a couple of sauces said that the third boy took his belt off from his jeans and wrapped it around his hand to use it kind of when he punched someone that had inflicted a lot more damage again i don't know how true that bit is all we know for sure is that they definitely had a knife and immediately a physical fight ensued and that very quickly turned into one of the boys pulling the knife on shaquille and champion it was a very very one-sided fight the three suspects remained almost completely unharmed and they ended up running away from the scene fleeing the scene leaving champion bleeding to death and shaquille in almost critical condition on the street outside of primary school all in all this fight must have lasted maybe about 10 minutes from the moment they got out of the taxi to the point where they were running away from the murder scene it all happened so fast i can't imagine what must have been going through champion's head that he got swept up in all of this and within a couple of minutes he is now realizing that he is not gonna get out of here alive so police charged amani lynch and marvin simos with the murder of champion gander however devonta clifford was still in saint lucia they knew they needed to get him because now they were pretty sure that he was part of this they wanted to charge him with champions murder and they knew he was a very dangerous person he was capable of such violence and he was just over there in the caribbean bear in mind this is just a week into the investigation and i said they didn't get devontae clifford back from the caribbean for three years police tried absolutely everything they could they were talking to the saint lucian government everything they were saying this guy is so dangerous send him back we are literally gonna charge him with a murder but for some reason the government were being like weird about it they didn't want to send him over eventually in 2016 so three years after the murder the saint lucian government were like fine fine you can have him so they put him on a plane sent him to gatwick airport and the uk police intercepted him as soon as he landed on that plane they arrested devonte clifford and now they had all three men that they could finally charge and get to a trial to get them some kind of sentence so they did question devonta as soon as they got him back in the uk because obviously they needed to hear his side of things and he actually said well he kind of maintained his innocence as best as he could he said that he was there that day he was at the scene of the murder but he said that he did nothing he said that he himself never used a weapon the only person that used a weapon was amani lynch with the knife he said that his only part in that whole fight was when he grabbed champion and held him in a headlock and that was when amani approached and began stabbing him whether those details are true or not we don't know but at least devontae is admitting that he was there at the murder scene and that gave police the grounds to charge him and send him on his trial when that trial eventually rolled round amani lynch made headlines for being exceptionally disrespectful in the trial so i think what happened was devante clifford and marvin simos were given some kind of plea deal they were actually acquitted of their part in the murder which i have a lot to say about it's very frustrating very very frustrating that they stood there and watched their friend stab someone 11 times devonta clifford literally held champion gander while his friend stabbed him if devonte wasn't there holding champion he possibly wouldn't have died so i think it's not very fair that these boys were acquitted and just let free but that was for a reason and that was because devonte and marvin actually helped to give evidence against amani lynch who was the one that actually held the knife and actually stabbed shaquille and champion so i suppose it is disappointing but maybe without them being acquitted maybe they wouldn't have been able to get amani lynch down so i have faith that everything was done in the best way that police and the courts could have done it so anyway in the actual trial it was actually only amani lynch and all of his associates that were in the dark he actually invited all his friends up because he didn't want to be there by himself don't know how that's allowed but it was for some reason and apparently they were all just like laughing joking they were literally just acting as though they were on a day out like school trip to the court they didn't care like champions family were all there in the court they were crying they they had to relive everything that had happened to their loved one and amani lynch was just laughing he was just joking as if he hadn't just taken the life of such a promising wonderful young boy and amani was actually being really confrontational and and just rude in the court like he was shouting over to the jurors he was being really threatening he was saying that he was gonna find out where they live and he was gonna send people on them like in the court in your murder trial you're telling people that you're gonna find out where they live and send people on them that's the last thing you should do when you're being tried for murder i think champion's younger sister jennifer described it as it was like evil was in the room which i think was a really powerful quote which probably sums up imani's actions very well i have another quote from champion's mother peggy as well she said i see the boy laughing and jerking and looking up towards his family members in the public gallery he acts like he is special and enjoying life which is something my family are not able to do since the loss of champion the trial was 14 weeks long in total so a very long one and it was just such a dragged out traumatic ordeal for champions family and all of that only for it to end on a very disappointing note as well like i said devontae clifford and mavin simos were both acquitted of the murder of every charge on them which i don't think should have happened i think they should have got something i understand that deal where you give evidence against this person and will give you some kind of deal or a lesser sentence but that's what it should have been a lesser sentence not complete acquittal but amani lynch himself who was the one that was looking like he was going to get a good sentence even he didn't he was actually cleared of his murder charge and instead he was given a manslaughter verdict instead and champion's family were obviously so upset and disappointed with this the boy that had killed their loved one their son was not even being done as a murderer anymore how is that manslaughter how is that not murder how can you stab someone 11 times and expect them to survive it because that's what they're saying amani did if you're stabbing someone 11 times it is very clear that your intention is to kill them you can't stab someone 11 times and expect them to recover for this manslaughter verdict amani lynch was given 14 years in prison that started in 2017 but he'll actually be eligible for parole just seven years into that 14-year sentence so halfway through the sentence he could get out in 2024 which i just think is insane if he does get let out after seven years in prison for murdering a 17 year old boy with such a promising future i think it's just heartbreaking i think i don't think that's justice personally amani lynch is still in prison now and he somehow got access to a phone and he keeps an instagram account and he's always posting stories where he's like dancing and oh i don't know what the account is i don't know what the name is i'm not even gonna try and look because i'm gonna stay as far away from that as i can if you want to see some small clips of his instagram account there are some in the mtv true life crime documentary on this case like right at the end of the documentary they've put in like a couple of clips of them going through his like instagram highlights oh my god he has an instagram highlight that's titled just the sh emoji and he just posts loads of stuff from his time in prison like there's one clip of him dancing and he's captioned it this is the dance i done when i beat the case he is bragging about getting away with murder all of that is very frustrating very upsetting very disappointing but i do have a slightly nicer nerd to end this case on and that is that champion's younger brother has actually followed in his brother's footsteps to become a musician a rapper and he's actually very successful his name is berna you might have heard of him he's quite like um quite popular he gets like millions of streams in like the london rap scene some of his most popular songs include council state of mind bit he has that song bit and berna has been quoted saying it's been tough since champion's death but putting my thoughts all down on paper and being able to rap about it makes it easier i just want to finish what champion started and i don't know if he is still in 2021 but at one point burner was managed by one of champion's school friends a girl called sasha that was champion's friend in school was now working with his brother they were doing it together to try and achieve champions dreams but for burner you know i just thought that was nice that they could get together and work on this thing after such tragedy that they can like connect and keep champion's memory alive like that champion's mother has also since set up a charity in her son's memory it's called all champion and it fights to end knife crime they offer help to victims of knife crime to help them kind of get back up on their feet because it can really affect people obviously other than the physical like if they do survive and they get treated and they're back in fighting physical condition that will affect someone's mental forever they won't feel safe on the streets ever again they'll have trust issues you know and this charity really helps to help people that have been affected by knife crime even the perpetrators as well they rehabilitate perpetrators you know people that get swept up in gang life at a very young age and then they can't find a way out of it and they're committing these knife crimes though they don't really want her but they just kind of feel stuck in that and another lovely thing that the all champion charity is doing that's kind of separate from the knife crime stuff it was one of champion's dreams when he was alive to build an orphanage in conga and of course he never got chance to do it and so they are currently raising money to build an orphanage there's a gofundme for it i'll leave it linked down below if you do have anything to give no matter how small i'm sure it would be very much appreciated they've only raised about a thousand of the 30 000 girl right now so honestly anything and everything that you can do on it i'll leave it linked in the description it was something that champion was so passionate about he knew he always wanted to do that and so his family are building that as his legacy like that is gonna be champion forever you know making such a difference and i think that's lovely yeah like i said there'll be a link down below in the description for that gofundme and also to the charity all champion you can just donate to that charity to help them campaign against knife crime but that is all i have for this case thank you so so much for watching like i said if you do have any cases that are kind of similar to this one related to knife crime especially knife crime in london please leave them down below in the comments i'll look through as many as i can i really want to try and do more like this on my channel i felt so connected to this case as i was researching it and i feel like there's something there i feel like i want to fight for this a little bit more it's something that i haven't really looked into and i feel quite bad about that but i suppose better late than never and now i'm here to kind of spread education and resources on this this horrible knife crime epidemic that's going on in london it's so sad it's so scary i mean it's sad for the victims and also for the perpetrators that get swept up in this life even when they don't want to be in it i mean there's differing levels of sympathy but also you know some people have no choice and i feel like this just should be talked about way more so that's what we're going to do on the eleanor neil channel let's do some more cases like this thanks again to michelin tv for sponsoring this video remember they're giving you guys a special limited time offer of 30 off of an annual subscription making it just 3.50 a month plus a two-week free trial to kick that off so if you want to make the most of that offer go through the link down below in the description go get your discount huge thank you to all of my channel members for helping me decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the join button on a desktop or there'll be a link in the description of this video but yeah thank you so so much for watching i really appreciate it if you want to leave a thumbs up that would really help me out i would really love to see all your beautiful thumbs on the video if you want to subscribe to my channel there'll be a link to do so right here i make true crime content like this every single week if you want to subscribe to my second channel that's a little bit more light-hearted a little bit more crackhead vibes um then you can click on that one but if you want to watch another true crime video i'll leave you a playlist on screen right now these are a bunch of my favorite videos that i've covered so yeah i'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 804,850

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, bbc, itv, netflix, storytime, forensic files, 2020, crime watch daily, dateline, interview, news, creepypasta, horror, champion ganda, champion, ganda, mtv, mtv true life crime, amani lynch, true life crime, true life crime uk, mtv uk, london, gangs, gang, uk, england, knife, crime

Id: bKfG_ZReu04

Length: 60min 0sec (3600 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021