Last month four teenagers were murdered in London. The fact their deaths occurred in the space of ten days only highlighted the tragedy.
Three were stabbed to death (Wing Ho, Kasey Gordon, Daniel Graham) and one ran into the path of a bus after being confronted by a gang (Ezekiel Amosu).
In recent years teen murders have been seen as a barometer of ‘Broken Britain’. An increase indicates a breakdown in society and its values, a decrease… well, let’s gloss over the decrease.
The public and media uproar peaked in June 2008 with the murder of 16 year-old Ben Kinsella, the brother of Eastenders actress (and now anti-knife crime campaigner) Brooke Kinsella.
One of the measures introduced by the Labour Government was an increase in the minimum term for murders carried out using a knife brought to the scene, from 15 to 25 years.
But by the time this came into effect in March 2010 (following a review, then the official announcement in November 2009) the number of teen murders had decreased. In fact it more than halved, from 29 in 2008 to 13 in 2009.
In 2010 it rose to 19, although the total number of murders continued to fall.
The reality is that crime appears to come randomly in waves. Trends can only be seen over longer periods.
Four teen murders in a month is not that unusual – it last happened in April 2010 – and there were five in both June 2007 and May 2008.
But imagine that you only gathered statistics between October and December 2008, the peak year for teenage murders. There was only one.
At the risk of stating the obvious, one month does not make a trend.
A similar point was made following reports of four homicides in London in a single day, July 10, 2008. Statistical analysis revealed that this was actually a predictable event, rather than an alarming development.
We can’t predict individual murders, but their pattern is highly predictable. This should mean we can be ready for events that appear to be good (a long gap between murders) or bad (3 or more murders on the same day) – both events are to be expected by chance alone. But by knowing what pattern to be expect, then we should also be able to spot when something really unusual is happening.
He also makes the point that “there is no evidence for homicide rates to depend on the month, but there is a significant ‘Saturday effect’ of around 60% increase in homicide rate compared to all other days of the week combined.”
The new police crime map (police.uk) is the third version to hit the internet since January 2009.
Earlier attempts didn’t particularly excite the interest of the public. This time the site buckled under the pressure of 18 million hits an hour.
So what’s different?
Unlike previous incarnations (see the Met’s borough and ward crime map for an example) it attempts to map crime on a street-by-street level.
You can now see exactly how many crimes have been recorded by the police on your doorstep, rather than a total for a much larger area.
But aside from the curiosity effect that many websites experience on launch, the reaction to the site itself has been mixed.
For every person who thinks it’s ‘too much information’ (the reaction of young mums in Windsor, apparently), others find it vague, flawed, useless and even misleading. It’s also been reported that the site cost £300,000 of public money to develop.
While the site has made its data freely available, the data itself has already been sorted and condensed into simple but vague categories.
Homicide is combined with GBH and assault to form ‘violence’, sexual assaults are placed with an unknown number of other offences under the tag ‘Other.’
The argument is that crimes should be anonymised to protect the victims being identified – but the Americans have been mapping individual incidents for years (see below). These days they even show the exact addresses of sex offenders.
On the upside, there are developments on the way. Pilot schemes in different areas of the country are looking into daily updates, a case tracking system for victims, information about convicted offenders and mapping trends for offences.
One benefit of releasing full open data is that it can be used to create all kinds of different visualisations without any cost to the taxpayer. The newspapers naturally looked for the most crime-ridden streets of the country, but one of the best early examples was this ‘hotspot’ map of London.
Purely from murdermap’s point of view, the new data won’t help at all with the massive task of tracking down every murder and inputting it into the database. All the police provide are numbers, but numbers tell only half the story.
Londoners have always liked maps, perhaps because they use them every day to find their way around this massive city. The most famous map is also a work of art – Harry Beck’s 1931 design for the underground – and almost every household has a battered old A-Z somewhere.
But over the last year there has been an explosion in mapping over the internet and the craze shows no sign of abating. Maps have become entertainment as well as tour guides.
Whereas previously your friends may have used Facebook and Twitter to link to cat videos on Youtube or crazy pictures on Flickr, now they’re also linking to maps that help us to see London in a new light.
What does the BBC use to mark the death of musician Gerry Rafferty? Not just an obituary, but a map of hit songs about locations in London including Rafferty’s own ‘Baker Street’.
Maps have long been used to illustrate more than just geography – take a look at John Snow’s 1854 cholera map, the Temperance Society’s 1886 map of public houses, or even Wenceslaus Hollar’s map of the damage caused by the Great Fire of London in 1666.
What else can you map? Well, there’s communities like London’s football supporters, there are maps showing how badly London was hit by German bombs during WWII, but how about animating the first night of the Blitz?
Books and film? Find the local libraries threatened with closure, pore over an interactive map of more than 400 books set in different areas of London or 100 locations used in films.
Then art, and this staggeringly massive hand drawn map of Greater London and a map of Banksy graffiti locations. But there should also be a London version of these strange ‘graphical anagrams’. Naturally companies are jumping on the map craze to sell artworks – would you like a London typeface map? That’ll be £43. Or how about £99 for a canvas map to put on your wall?
People are also swapping digital copies of startling historical artifacts, such as these plans for railway stations in London 1864, an old tube map from 1908 or even a mystifying map of ‘social and functional analysis’.
And what about the future? A map works for that too – such as this vision of London-on-Sea in 2100.
Is this just a passing craze? Projects to keep an eye on include this one to add 3D models to London on Google Earth or the strangely relaxing London Sound Survey, which offers the chance to listen to recordings with titles like ‘Under Tower Bridge’ and inside ‘St Bartholomew the Great’ church (mostly quiet, with occasional bleeps from a tourist’s camera). Then there’s always the London 2012 Olympics.
And if you need a weekly fix of all things cartographical, then check out the blogs Google Maps Mania or Map of the Week for a regular fix.
Who created the first ‘murder map’? What did it show, and where?
Theoretically it could have been a scrap of paper featuring a rough pencil diagram and a cross to mark the spot. It could even have been drawn by the murderer himself.
But legend has it that the murder map truly began with a crime ‘mashup’ put together by journalist and web developer Adrian Holovaty in May 2005.
The website was then known as chicagocrime.org, and mapped not only murder but other types of crime in that city. Nowadays it’s part of a wider network called everyblock.com which maps everything from restaurant reviews in the local media to a house going on sale. And yes, murders.
This kind of murder mapping uses data taken directly from the local police force. As a result it gives little detail other than the location and a rough category (e.g domestic).
A similar example is crimereports.com – which describes itself as ‘the largest and most comprehensive crime-mapping network in the world’. The first thing you notice about it is that it tells you the location of every sex offender. There are a lot of them (the little triangles). And strangely if you click on a triangle it gives you their name, age, eye colour and photo.
These sites don’t extend to the UK yet, but they could do if our police forces published their data. For example, Spotcrime.org plainly intended to capture this ‘market’ but has since fallen into disrepair. It was last updated in London to reflect the student fee protests at Millbank in October last year.
As for dedicated murder maps, they tend to be run either by local newspapers, dedicated journalists or even community volunteers. This doesn’t mean they are all simple Google Map-based projects, like the one put together by the Daily Record in July 2008.
The Manchester Evening News were perhaps the first in the UK to join the trend in January 2008, by mapping every fatal shooting in the city since 1999, adding names, ages and a small photo for each victim. Sadly it doesn’t seem to have been updated since December 2009.
BBC Online joined the fray with its impressive map and statistical database of teenage murders across Britain in 2008 and 2009, at the height of concerns about youth crime and knives. It would have been interesting if they had continued the project, but alas they did not.
The true home of murder maps remains the US, and the most impressive example is still the LA Homicide Report. Its main innovation was that each homicide became in effect a separate blog entry. From this information an impressive database was built.
Not only does it map each murder since 2007 but it also displays the data in a very accessible way. The victims’ photos are displayed underneath in a gallery, each marker takes you to a detailed report of the crime and statistics for age, ethnicity and cause of death are all on the front page.
This is particularly impressive when you consider that there are over 800 homicides a year in Los Angeles. Still, it would be nice to have an idea whether the case was ever solved or if any suspects went to trial. At present the only updates are provided by members of the public adding their own comments.
Many major cities in America now have their own murder map, although the quality varies wildly. In Oakland, California they have an impressive map filter but very little information on the crimes themselves. This goes for Philadelphia too, which has an impressive database going back to 1988 but no sense of the story behind the name, age, race and gender of the victim.
Some maps are staggering just to look at. Take this one of Puerto Rico, which appears to have been launched this month:
This is an island slightly smaller in area than Cyprus with what appears to be 577 murders for the year 2010. Below the map is printed the disclaimer ‘Many murders do not appear on the map due to lack of specific information about the crime scene.’ Those purple balloons represent ‘unknown’ while yellow is ‘error or stray bullet’, green is ‘hate’, red is ‘drugs’ and blue is ‘fight or revenge’.
Other projects are more stylised, such as the ‘Not just a number’ website project which won awards for the way it mapped homicides in 2007.
There are many, many other examples, including a map for Flint, Michigan, which closed in March 2009. Its founder, freelance journalist Gordon Young, said in his blog:
It sparked some good discussions about how to cover homicides, but it proved to be way more work than I imagined. More importantly, I didn’t feel it was really providing much of a memorial to the people who died in Flint.
Ideally a murder map should not just map all murders but provide some kind of service to the community, whether by telling the victim’s side of the story, offering some context for the crime or giving an insight into how these cases are dealt with by the police, the media and the justice system.
If the database and the information within it are good enough, a map provides an alternative to the official statistics and may result in more openness in government. In this department, if nothing else, we are still lagging a long way behind the US.
Sukhwinder Singh, a 31-year-old builder, was stabbed in the heart after trying to stop robbers stealing a woman’s handbag.
On 8 January 2010 he chased two muggers who attacked a 28 year-old woman walking home from Barking train station along Loxford Road at around 6.40pm. He pursued them for 50 to 70 yards along Victoria Road before being stabbed. He was found fatally wounded in Uphall Road, Barking, just after 7pm and was pronounced dead at hospital.
The mugging victim’s mobile phone and handbag were not recovered, although police said the bag may have been discarded in a garage area near Charlton Crescent about 1.5 miles from the murder scene.
The stolen handbag which was never recovered
One robbery suspect was described as black, 5ft 10in-6ft tall, skinny with a young face and wearing a black hooded top and light grey jogging bottoms. The second was thought to be a lighter-skinned black man, 6ft tall, of stocky build with possible facial markings or facial hair. He was wearing a light blue hooded top with markings on the sleeves.
Detectives released CCTV footage of potential suspects and witnesses in the area. The three sections show:
An area of Wakering Road leading to the underpass where the robbery victim had walked through. Footage shows her being overtaken by two men who officers need to identify as they might have seen the suspects.
Two males coming out of Harvey Road, turning into Uphall Road and walking towards the area of the murder about 25 minutes before it happened. There is a third male who appears unconnected to them.
A male running across the screen (from right to left) – believed to be one of the suspects running north along Uphall Road away from the murder scene shortly after it happened.
Five men were arrested in connection with the investigation but nobody has ever been charged. In 2015 DCI Dave Whellams said: “There has been no identification of the person or persons responsible. What we can hope is, that in the years since Sukhwinder was killed, allegiances of those involved, or those who know who was involved and that have kept silent, may now have changed. And that those people re-examine their consciences and consider doing the right thing and help us by coming forward.”
Call the incident room on 020 8345 3775.
Mark Corcoran was stabbed to death in the street near the Crystal Palace football ground on Valentines Day 2010.
The 26 year-old labourer staggered into the Subitha Food and Wine shop in Whitehorse Lane, South Norwood, southeast London, at around 8.20pm. CCTV pictures show him asking for help before collapsing to the floor. He bled to death at the scene from a single stab wound to the chest.
Mark Corcoran asks for help after being stabbed
Police believe Mark was stabbed within 100 yards of the shop.
Detectives appealed for witnesses who saw or spoke to Mark after 7.30pm on 14 February, the day of the FA Cup football match between Crystal Palace and Aston Villa. DCI Cliff Lyons said: “Mark was wearing a distinctive black and white stripy top and would have struggled to walk the 100 yards to the shop. Many people were around that evening, either out celebrating Valentine’s Day or at the football match and it is possible that they may have seen Mark. I would like to hear from these people no matter how insignificant their information may seem as it may assist us with finding out what happened. “
Any witnesses or anyone with information should call the incident room on 020 8721 4961.
Human rights campaigner Abdel Salam Hussain Abdel Salam, 56, was stabbed to death at his home in Boone Street, Lee, southeast London. His body was discovered at 7.10am on 13 March 2010 when a neighbour noticed his front door was open. He had been stabbed in the leg and bled to death in his hallway.
Abdel Salam, who depended on two walking sticks to get around, was last seen alive at home by his social services carer on the afternoon of Friday, 12 March. CCTV cameras captured him withdrawing cash from a cash point in Lee High Road at about 5pm that day. He was last heard from at around 9.15pm when he spoke to a friend on the phone.
Detectives said they were keeping an open mind about the motive for the murder of Mr Abdel Salam, who was well known for his work for the charity ‘Redress’ helping torture survivors.
DCI Graeme Gwyn said: ” It is clear that this was a brutal attack on a defenceless man, made more tragic as Abdel Salam had devoted much of his life combating abuse of human rights upon others. We have always believed the answer to this crime lies within the local community and someone out there has information that could greatly assist our inquiry. We continue to keep an open mind about why Abdel Salam was murdered in his own home. Please contact us with any information, no matter how small.”
Four men were arrested in 2010 but nobody was ever charged.
Errol McKenzie, 37, was shot dead on playing fields in Leyton, east London, on Sunday, 11 April 2010. The 37 year-old salesman was found with three bullet wounds to the chest in the park off Seymour Road at 12.50am. Errol, who was known as ‘Cable Guy’ because of his job fixing cable boxes and electrical equipment, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Near his body detectives found a white takeaway carton, some alcohol he bought from a shop shortly before his death, and a bag containing two cable boxes.
The investigation revealed Errol had visited an address near Northumberland Park railway station in Tottenham to discuss the sale of a cable box. He left at about 10.45pm and made his way back to Leyton. Errol was captured on CCTV in a local shop at 11.15pm before heading to the playing fields. It is believed he was in the park for at least half an hour before he was shot.
Detectives appealed for help tracing two men on bicycles captured by CCTV riding in and around the playing fields at the time of the murder. Both riders were also seen in the area earlier that night at around 7pm. One of them was wearing a dark-blue hooded top and faded blue jeans. His bike had a distinctive ‘whale tail’ mudguard. The second was seen riding along the pavement on Lea Bridge Road, carrying a bag.
Officers also hope to identify a group of males seen walking in Lea Bridge Road that night.
Detectives said there was “no obvious motive” for the murder and said they did not know why Errol went into the park
On the twelfth anniversary, the Metropolitan Police offered a reward of £20,000 for information leading to a conviction.
Errol’s daughter Nicole said in a statement: “These guys are still out there, I could be walking past them, I don’t know. We just need some justice and some peace for our family.” His nephew Tylon added: “It affects us every single year and every day. Please give our family justice and let us rest, please.”
Though years have passed, our determination to find out what happened to Errol, and bring justice to his still-grieving family, remains undiminished.
Had he arranged to meet someone? We believe he was in the park for at least half an hour before he was killed.
There are fragments of information missing that make up the whole picture of what happened to Errol, but in the passing of time allegiances and mindsets change, and I am confident that it can and will happen here.
Errol’s family still grieve for him daily, and the information you have could bring them some peace at long last.
DCI Dave Whellams of the Metropolitan Police
Anyone with information is asked to call the incident room on 0208 345 3775 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Geoffrey Bacon, a 90-year-old WWII veteran, was killed for his travel pass and £40 in cash on 26 April 2010. At around 10.45am, as he entered his flat on the second floor of the Peabody Estate in Camberwell Green, south London, he was bundled to the floor and punched in the face.
The robber, described as a light-skinned black man aged 30-40, took Mr Bacon’s wallet before searching the bedroom. He then fled the scene, shutting the front door behind him, leaving Mr Bacon on the floor of his hallway with a broken hip until a neighbour heard his cries for help. Mr Bacon spent 11 weeks in hospital recovering but never moved back to his flat and died on Thursday 5 August 2010 at a care home in Westgate-on-Sea, Kent. A special post mortem found his death was a direct result of the assault and robbery committed against him.
CCTV cameras captured Mr Bacon walking home after a shopping trip in Butterfly Walk, Camberwell.
Detectives are also investigating the circumstances of another robbery which took place minutes later on the same estate. At about 11:10hrs, a 66-year old woman using a walking stick was returning to her flat when a man grabbed her handbag. The suspect used it to hit her around the head before running off. He was described as a light-skinned black man, about 25 years old, wearing a white t-shirt and dark coloured trousers.
In a public appeal in 2013 DI Nathan Eason said: “Geoffrey was an honest, decent man who had served his country bravely in the Second World War. He had worked all his life and had earned the right to a peaceful and safe retirement. He did not deserve to have it taken from him in a cowardly attack by an assailant who used extreme force on a frail pensioner.”
Anyone with information can contact the incident room on 020 8721 4961.
Minicab driver Michael Okonko-Nwoso, 49, was attacked minutes after dropping off a fare in Abbey Wood, southeast London, in the early hours of Saturday, 19 June 2010. He was found lying injured at the back of his silver Ford Galaxy in Cookhill Road at around 4.50am. The doors of his silver Ford Galaxy were open but nothing appeared to have been stolen and the SatNav was still in the car.
Michael, who lived with his wife Catherine and their two daughters in Plumstead, died in hospital later the same day.
Police said they were unable to establish a motive but appealed for help tracing a man captured on CCTV running along the parade of shops between 4.42am and 4.44am in Eynsham Drive Abbey Wood, around the time Michael was injured. DCI Dave Manning said: “What we do know is that Michael was a law-abiding hardworking family man who died whilst going about his every day business. We know that he was in the Sewell Road area shortly after 4.30am on the day he died. We are still very keen to speak to anybody who was in Sewell Road or Cookhill Road anytime between 4am and 5am.”
CCTV image of man running near scene of attack
Four people were arrested in connection with the investigation but nobody has ever been charged. Any witnesses can call the incident room on 020 8721 4054.
Wayne Powell, a well-known DJ, was shot dead in Chingford, east London, on 5 July 2010.
The 39 year-old father-of-six had got out of his black BMW to speak to the gunman in Higham Station Avenue at around 11pm.
He was shot five times in the back with a 9mm pistol by the killer, who was described as being ‘possibly black’, five foot ten inches tall and wearing a tracksuit with a hooded top. The gunman then calmly walked off in the direction of Coningsby Gardens.
The murder was witnessed by a female friend who was sat in the BMW. She told the inquest in March 2022: “I saw Wayne look around to his right to the drivers side window. I then saw a figure in the right walking to Wayne’s car. I thought it was a man by the way he moved. I thought he mumbled and Wayne said something back. Wayne then opened his door and pushed it up. I then heard a gunshot.”
Wayne suffered bullet wounds to his back, abdomen, left buttock, and left arm. He was pronounced dead at hospital at 1.30am on 6 July.
Detectives told the inquest that the investigation continued and that they had recovered the murder weapon.
Wayne’s brother Robert, 50, was shot dead in Harlow, Essex, in 2020 but officers said that it was unlikely the two cases were connected. Robert Powell was in custody at the time of Wayne’s death.
Wayne, who lived in Stonebridge Road, Tottenham, north London, was known as DJ Connoisseur and worked as a customer assistant for London Underground at Seven Sisters tube station. His fiancee Anne Boriel was five months pregnant with his son at the time of the murder.
Detectives said he was not involved in crime or gangs and was a popular family man. The motive remains unclear.
My partner Wayne was a good hard-working man who loved his family. When he was killed I was pregnant with his child. Baby Wayne will never get the chance to meet his daddy. Wayne’s six children will never see him again. Neither will his parents or brothers and sisters who are equally affected by this senseless killing. As DJ Connoisseur, he was well-loved on the music scene but in particular on Energy FM. On the day after his murder we were touched by the sheer volume of listeners expressing their grief and sympathy. He was universally popular. We can think of no reason why anybody would want to kill him. He was a big strong guy but never used his physical presence to bully or gain advantage; he would shy away from confrontation and help anyone whenever he could do so. This was not a gangland murder; Wayne had no links to any gang, drugs, guns or crime. Someone knew exactly where Wayne would be on the night of Monday 5 July. That person had ready access to a gun and was prepared to use it – coolly and callously. We cannot believe that person has not bragged or expressed his guilt to another about what he did. I am imploring anyone who can help identify the killer to contact the police so we can ensure no other family has to go through what we have experienced and that justice and closure can be achieved for Wayne.
Anne Boriel speaking in 2011
Two men were arrested but nobody has ever been charged. Anybody with information can call the incident room on 0208 345 3715.
MI6 spy Gareth Williams, 31, was found locked inside a bag at his flat in Pimlico, south London, on 23 August 2010. Police forced entry to flat 4, 36 Alderney Street after being alerted to his disappearance by friends, family and work colleagues. In the bathroom a red North Face holdall was lying in the bath, the zip padlocked shut. Inside, Mr Williams lay naked on top of the keys to the lock. He had bruises to both elbows, suggesting he had fought to escape before succumbing to lack of oxygen. Toxicological testing revealed no evidence of poison, drugs or other suspicious substances in his body and the cause of death remains unknown.
The locked padlock on the bag
There was no sign of a disturbance or break-in and detectives said there was no evidence anything was stolen or that items in the flat were ‘specifically posed.’
In the wardrobe detectives found a £15,000 collection of women’s clothing, including designer dresses, shoes and wigs. His mobile phone had been used in the past to access websites relating to bondage and escape from bondage, including hogtie.com, boundanna.com, artofconstriction.com and likera.com. Investigations also revealed he had made visits to a ‘drag cabaret’ and had attended two fashion courses for beginners at Central St Martins College in Clerkenwell over the previous year.
Police initially described the case as a suspicious or unexplained death rather than a murder. The investigation revealed Mr Williams had worked as a communications officer at GCHQ in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, but was on secondment to MI6 at the time of his death. He had returned to the UK from a planned holiday in the US on Wednesday 11th August 2010. Two days later he made a visit to the drag cabaret ‘Bistroteque’ in Mile End. The day after that he was caught on CCTV entering Holland Park tub station at around 3pm. On Sunday 15th August Mr Williams went shopping in Brompton Road, south Kensington, and visited the Harrods store. At around 2.30pm CCTV images show him in Hans Crescent heading towards Sloane Street near to the Dolce and Gabbana store. He was wearing a red t-shirt, beige trousers, and white trainers. This is thought to be the last confirmed sighting of him alive.
At the inquest in 2012, coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox delivered a narrative verdict on May 2 and said Gareth’s death was “unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated.” Although there was not enough evidence to return a verdict of unlawful killing, she was “satisfied that on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully.”
However on 13 November 2013, following a review of the case, the Metropolitan Police announced they had concluded their investigation and believed it was more likely to have been an accident. They also said there was no evidence his death was connected to his work.
Ricardo Cunha, 23, was shot dead in a suspected case of mistaken identity at around 11.20pm on 11 September 2010. The Portuguese window cleaner had been watching Match of the Day on TV with his girlfriend when he heard knocking on the front door his flat in Pondfield House, Elder Road, West Norwood. When he looked out the front bedroom window to investigate he was shot in the head. Ricardo was pronounced dead at the scene less than half an hour later.
The possible murder weapon
Detectives investigating the murder released a picture of a British-made Webley Mark Six revolver which may have been used in the killing. The gun was also fired during an incident on 14 September 2010 in Picton House on the Clapham Park Estate in Brixton and was found the following day on the nearby Clapham Manor Estate. It is thought to date from 1924 and may have been kept as a keepsake from the war before being stolen.
Everything in my life is missing at the moment, because he was my future. Why would someone want to take his life? This person has got the wrong guy or the wrong girl. Whoever they intended to get at that night, they got totally the wrong person.”
Ricardo’s girlfriend, Sapna
The case was featured on the BBC Crimewatch TV programme but nobody has ever been arrested or charged. A reward of £30,000 remains on offer for information leading to a conviction.
We still don’t have answers about what happened and why his life was taken so cruelly. Nothing will bring our Ricardo back to us but I want whoever did this to my son to pay for what they did. I appeal to anyone who knows or heard anything about what happened to approach the police and help us find some closure to this pain. Ricardo was such a lovely young boy, he was always ready to help everyone, always there for us and his friends. He treated everyone with respect either young or old, he spoke to everyone with kindness. So I don’t know why on earth someone would do this to Ricardo. He had all his life ahead of him, so many plans for that life, and it was all stolen from him. There is still not a day that goes by that we don’t cry at not having our Rick here with us. I strongly appeal to anyone out there that has information to come through for us and help us bring a close to all this pain.”
Statement of Ricardo’s mother Maria, issued on the tenth anniversary
Detective Sergeant Matt Flynn of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command said: “The systems in place for providing police with information have significantly moved on since Ricardo’s death. Anyone who knows the killer’s identity can chose to remain anonymous by providing the information to Crimestoppers who don’t work for police and do not share contact details. In addition, they don’t even ask for your name or record your IP address. I know that someone knows who shot this innocent man in his own home. With the passage of time allegiances can change and I am directly appealing to those people who, for whatever reason, did not come forward at the time, to use this opportunity to give us the information now. Any information provided, no matter how small, is treated in the strictest of confidence.”
Call the incident room on 020 8721 4005.
Samuel Adelagun, 16, was shot dead by masked gunmen in Plaistow, east London, at 3am on Saturday 23 October 2010.
He was walking along Upper Road with three friends when they were approached from behind by two men dressed in black with balaclavas.
Four shots were fired as they reached a patch of parkland at the junction with Chesterton Road. Samuel was hit in the chest and died at the scene.
A 15 year-old boy was hit in the abdomen but made a full recovery. The other two boys managed to escape to a nearby house.
The death of my son has greatly affected myself and my family. He is missed very much every day and his death has left a significant hole in our lives. We hope that eventually those responsible will be brought to justice.
Samuel’s mother, Ola Shokumbi
Four men aged between 20 and 23 were arrested in November 2010 but they were released with no further action and nobody has ever been charged.
In a further appeal in October 2020, Detective Sergeant Jason Grafham said: “Despite the passing of a decade, we continue to seek new information to identify those responsible for Samuel’s murder. I hope, that with the passing of ten years, and the offer of a substantial reward, someone who has information now feels they can tell us what they know, and help bring justice to Samuel’s loved ones. Samuel had everything to live for. His family remain devastated and they continue to seek answers for why he was so brutally taken from them. If you don’t want to speak directly to police, you can remain 100% anonymous by giving your information to Crimestoppers, who in turn will pass that information to us. Someone knows something about this murder and I urge those people to do the right thing and share what they know.”
Anyone with information can call the incident room on 020 8785 8267.
(Note: The use of the word ‘unsolved’ here refers to cases where nobody has yet been charged.)
