Mother of murdered schoolboy fears she may ‘never recover' from son's loss
Aspiring rapper Kelyan Bokassa called, 'I want my mum' after he was mortally wounded in front of horrified passengers aboard a route 472 bus in Woolwich, south-east London, on 7 January.
He was stabbed around 27 times in the attack that lasted around 14 seconds.
Two youths, aged 16, appeared at the Old Bailey to be sentenced on Friday after they pleaded guilty to Kelyan's murder and having a knife.
In a moving victim impact statement, Kelyan's mother Marie Bokassa said: 'I stand here not just as a mother but as a broken soul whose life changed forever the day my child's life was taken from me by another child.'
Speaking through tears and wearing black, she added: 'At least my son is at peace, and those two kids are going to have a really tough time.
'I ask myself what has happened to those two boys that has resulted in that terrible act of violence and I cannot imagine how can they be so angry.
'What they did was horrific and I do not know what has led them to do this and maybe I will never.'
'That moment of violence may have lasted seconds but its consequences are eternal,' Ms Bokassa said.
She told the court her son had loved food, cooking and football and brought her flowers on her birthday.
'He would put music on and we'd dance together in the living room,' she said.
'He loved Mr Bean, which we watched together, and he would laugh. I miss his laugh, miss his voice.
'I will never see his children or be a grandmother and he will never have his own family.'
Ms Bokassa added that she had spent her son's 15th birthday at his graveside and that she missed everything about him.
She said that some people in her neighbourhood cannot look at her and she is petrified to take public transport, particularly the 472 bus.
'I feel judged,' Ms Bokassa added.
'Maybe I will never recover, all I know is I will live and I will have to be strong for my son and I will have to constantly find a coping mechanism,' she continued.
'He would want me to try and solve youth crime and not give up on my life.
'My son loved me and would want me to go on with my life.
'These two young boys took my son's life without hesitation, they will now have to face the consequences of their actions here today.
'My only hope is they get the help they need before they ever get released into society.'
In a statement, Kelyan's father, Hashim Mohamed, said his son's death had prompted him and his wife to consider 'youth violence' and to 'think politically' about knife crime.
'I never expected Kelyan's life to end tragically, to the contrary I believed he would one day thrive as an elite athlete or even as a creative,' he wrote in a statement read out on his behalf by prosecutor Deanna Heer KC.
The hearing was attended by around 20 members of the public, who filled the public gallery, all of whom wore black while some hid their faces and sobbed loudly as CCTV footage of the attack was shown to the court.
Kelyan's mother left the hearing briefly while the video of her son's murder was played.
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The Guardian
15 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
15 minutes ago
- The Guardian
UK jail escape trial reignites debate over indefinite sentences
The trial of an alleged escapee who spent hours on the roof of a high-security prison in his underpants is set to be the first time the stress caused by indeterminate sentences can be used as a legal defence. Joe Outlaw is due to stand trial on Monday for climbing on to the roof of HMP Frankland in Durham in June 2023 in protest at the imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence he and others are serving. The 38-year-old has been in jail for 13 years, much of that in isolation, after receiving an IPP sentence for robbing a takeaway at gunpoint in 2011. He says he does not remember the crime because he was drunk and high on drugs. Two months before his Durham protest, Outlaw staged a 12-hour sit-in on the roof of Strangeways, HMP Manchester, where he wrote 'FREE IPPZ' in paint. He is due to be tried later for 'escape from lawful custody' in allegedly damaging the roof of Strangeways and for starting a fire in his cell as part of a suicide attempt. The case raises once again the issue of IPPs, which 2,544 prisoners were still serving in March despite the sentences being abolished in 2012. The legislation that ended what campaigners describe as a cruel system was not retrospective. A spokesperson for Reform and Rebuild, a prison advocacy group which is set to give evidence in the trial, said it was 'well overdue' for courts to take into account the stress caused by IPPs. 'This sentence has led to a lot of destructive behaviour among prisoners,' the organisation said. Cherrie Nichol, a campaigner whose brother is serving an IPP, said that under the previous Conservative government many prisoners grew 'absolutely desperate' when they were told they would not be able to be resentenced. 'There were a few of the IPP prisoners who then took their lives because they decided that they were never going to get out,' she said. 'Nobody's been resentenced yet, but we are looking at human rights. That's another battle but we will get it. We'll definitely get it because it's cruel and inhumane. I think if we don't keep fighting and jumping up and down, then it'll just be forgotten.' Campaigners have made some progress over the years, for example in shortening the licences of those released from IPPs from 10 years to three years. Nichol said this 'meant some people could go on holiday with their families and have a life again, because 10 years is a long time after you've suffered'. But she added: 'The government won't admit they're wrong. So we have to go around, trample around things delicately.'
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Suspected robber's arrest leads police to find woman's body in house - and officers fear two others 'may have come to harm'
A murder investigation has been launched after the arrest of a suspected armed robber led officers to find the body of a young woman inside a house. Officers are also trying to trace a man and woman they believe "may have come to harm" in relation to the case, West Yorkshire Police said. The force had arrested the 37-year-old suspect after they received reports of an armed robbery at an Asda in Dewsbury, at 9.21pm on Saturday. Officers attended, arrested the man and seized a knife, the force said. Following the arrest, the armed robbery suspect told officers about a woman who he believed to be dead inside a property on Norfolk Street in Batley. Officers attended the address and found the body of a woman in her 20s. A spokesperson for the force said formal identification is yet to take place. The armed robbery suspect was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder. Officers are searching the Dewsbury area for the two other people they believe may have come to harm, with police present in the town centre, near to the River Calder and in Westtown. The force is appealing to anyone with CCTV, doorbell or dashcam footage to come forward. Detective Chief Inspector Dan Bates, of the homicide and major enquiry team, said: "This is clearly a very serious incident, where a young woman has lost her life. "There is a heightened police presence in Dewsbury today as we work to establish the full circumstances surrounding this incident. "Our immediate priority is to identify and locate the two people and establish whether or not they have come to any harm. "A murder investigation is also under way and we do not believe there is any wider risk to the public at this time. "We recognise this inquiry will cause concern in the community; we are working closely with our colleagues in the local neighbourhood policing team, who have stepped up patrols in the town centre."
