Two boys murdered drill rapper, 14, with machetes on bus

Telegraph

23-05-2025

Two boys murdered an aspiring 14-year-old drill rapper in a machete attack on a London bus.
Kelyan Bokassa was stabbed nearly 30 times as he travelled home on a route 472 bus in Woolwich, south-east London, on Tuesday January 7.
Emergency services were called to Woolwich Church Street, near Woolwich Ferry, just before 2.30pm.
Kelyan, an aspiring drill rapper, had sustained a severed femoral artery and died shortly after medics arrived at the scene.
In an unusual move, Scotland Yard had issued CCTV images and named two boys as part of a public appeal for information.
Two boys, both aged 16, were charged with murder and appeared at the Old Bailey on Friday for a plea hearing. The pair pleaded guilty to Kelyan's murder and having a knife on Woolwich Church Street.
Relatives of Kelyan gasped and appeared tearful as they sat metres away from the dock where the two boys sat flanked by officers.
Reporting of the case was briefly delayed after one of the boys' barristers had called for time to speak to his client in light of what had appeared to be an unexpected plea. Later, the youth returned to court and confirmed his guilty plea.
Judge Mark Lucraft KC ordered reports ahead of sentencing on July 25.
At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Tom Little KC said the victim was sitting on the back seat of the bus on the upper deck when he was attacked by two youths both armed with 'lengthy machetes'.
The defendants knew in advance of the presence of Kelyan when they boarded the bus and walked directly towards him, the court was told.
Mr Little said: 'It is clear this is not a form of spontaneous incident. The two defendants must have known the deceased was on the bus.
'They approach him and almost instantaneously, the two of them pull out machetes and attacked the deceased.
'He is stabbed or attempted to be stabbed on a total of 27 occasions before the defendants made their way off the bus.'
One of the machetes was discarded in the River Thames but was later recovered.
The defendants cannot be named because of their ages. However, Judge Lucraft indicated he would hear a media application to lift the reporting restriction at their sentencing hearing.
Kelyan's mother Mary Bokassa earlier claimed that her son had been groomed by gangs before the killing.
'My son and others were taken advantage [of] by gangs. They were groomed,' she told MailOnline.
'He was missing for a year and was living on the street. He finally turned up at my doorstep, he was sick, underweight and tattooed... He was exposed to drugs. He probably experienced something because I could sense it.
'He was not himself. If I questioned him he wouldn't tell me anything about his friends.'