Two teens jailed over machete murder of 14-year-old on London bus

Al Jazeera

6 days ago

Two British teenagers have been sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 15 years, for stabbing to death a 14-year-old boy on a London bus in broad daylight earlier this year.
Judge Mark Lucraft at London's Old Bailey court sentenced the pair, who cannot be named due to their age, to life in prison on Friday. He ordered that they be considered for parole after 15 years and 110 days in detention.
The teenagers stabbed 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa 27 times with machetes on the bus in the Woolwich area of southeast London on January 7. He later died from his injuries.
The attackers – aged 16 and 15 at the time of the time of murder – were arrested later that month. The pair pleaded guilty to murder in May.
The attack has reignited concern around youth gang violence and the ongoing problem of knife crime that has plagued the British capital and other cities in the United Kingdom for years.
Across Britain, knife crime is up by nearly 80 percent since 2015.
Last year, 10 teenagers were fatally stabbed in London alone, after 18 were killed in 2023, according to London's Metropolitan Police.
In September last year, a 15-year-old boy – reportedly a close friend of Bokassa – was also stabbed to death in Woolwich, in what a prosecutor described as gang retaliation.
In August last year, in another incident that sent shockwaves across Britain, a teenager carried out a deadly stabbing spree in the seaside town of Southport, which killed three young girls.
Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Lee, whose team led the Met investigation into Bokassa's murder, said the 'harsh reality in London is that violence disproportionately affects young Black men and boys'.
'The fact we're seeing so many teenagers like Kelyan die should be at the forefront of the minds of every politician, every policymaker and everyone who wants better for children growing up in London,' she said.
Judge Lucraft said one of the perpetrators was himself a 'victim of child criminal exploitation' by gangs, adding that he had faced 'a history of trauma'. He added that the second boy was also exploited by gangs from the age of 12 and experienced 'undiagnosed developmental needs'.
'It is sadly an all too frequent senseless loss of yet another young life to the horrors of knife crime', which 'no sentence of a court can ever truly reflect', Lucraft said.
Shortly after the murder, Bokassa's mother, Marie Bokassa, told the press her son was also exploited by gangs in the Woolwich area of southeast London.
Addressing the court on Friday, she asked: 'How can children behave like this?'
'What have the children been exposed to, to show such behaviour as this?'