Boy, 15, heard screaming for help after machete stabbing, court told

Independent

20-06-2025

A 15-year-old boy was heard screaming for help after he was stabbed with a machete in south-east London, a court has been told.
Daejaun Campbell died after an alleged 'targeted' attack in Eglinton Road, Woolwich, on September 22 last year.
Three teenagers are accused over his murder – Jacob Losiewicz, 18, Marko Balaz, 19, both from Abbey Wood, south-east London, and a boy aged 17, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Prosecutor Mukul Chawla KC told an Old Bailey jury during the trial's opening on Friday: 'The three defendants appear to have targeted Daejaun Campbell as he approached and went past the house that the three of them were in.
' Two of the defendants, Marko Balaz and (the 17-year-old), physically attacked Daejaun Campbell while the third, Jacob Losiewicz, was in close proximity providing encouragement first of all by his presence… and also providing shelter to the other two immediately after the attack.
'This was therefore, say the prosecution, a murder in which all three defendants jointly participated.'
Footage was played to jurors which the prosecution alleged shows the 17-year-old defendant 'picking up the machete he had just used to stab' Daejaun.
The jury was taken through multiple witness accounts of the incident, with one witness, named only as Witness A, believing they heard Daejaun screaming for help.
'They heard three to four screams of distress from outside,' Mr Chawla said.
'The victim screamed a number of times during the incident. Witness A thought he might have been screaming 'help'.'
Mr Chawla told jurors the reason for Daejaun's killing 'cannot be established', but said it is clear he had been carrying drugs, possibly crack cocaine, and money when he was attacked.
'He may therefore have been a person exploited, by reason of his age if for no other reason, to be used as carrier and supplier of drugs by organisations that will use younger people and other vulnerable people for those purposes,' the prosecutor said.
'That may be or may have been the reason why he was attacked.'
The court heard that during the incident, Daejaun threw a 'large knife' that he was carrying although it appears to have only hit a metal fence or railing and broken into pieces.
All three defendants deny murder, and the jury was told the 17-year-old has pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon – a machete – in a public place.
The trial continues.