Latest news with #macheteattacks
Yahoo
30-07-2025
- Yahoo
Convictions after two young friends killed in machete attacks months apart
Two teenage friends aged just 14 and 15 were killed in gang-related machete attacks four months apart, it can now be reported. Daejaun Campbell cried out 'I'm 15, don't let me die' after he was ambushed in Woolwich, south-east London, on September 22 last year, the Old Bailey heard. On Wednesday, a boy aged 17, was found guilty of his murder after a jury deliberated for more than 19 hours. Co-accused Marko Balaz, 19, from Abbey Wood, south-east London, was found not guilty of murder, but convicted of manslaughter. A third defendant, Jacob Losiewicz, 18, also from Abbey Wood, was cleared of wrongdoing. It can now be reported that Daejaun was friends with 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa, who was fatally stabbed by two 16-year-old boys with machetes on a bus in Woolwich months later on January 7. Aspiring rapper Kelyan, nicknamed Grippa, had featured in a YouTube music video entitled Gotta Eat – in which he was seen crouching beside a floral tribute to Daejaun. Last Friday, two 16-year-old youths were detained for at least 15 years and 10 months after pleading guilty at the Old Bailey to Kelyan's murder. The two boys' murders, though not directly related, bore striking similarities and have resulted in pleas by their families to end the 'senseless killings'. Last week, Kelyan's mother Marie Bokassa made an appeal for authorities to do more to stop the violence, saying: 'Our streets at bleeding.' In the wake of Daejaun's murder, his family released a statement in which Daejaun was described as 'naturally gifted, intelligent, creative and musically talented'. They said: 'The brutal manner which Daejaun was taken away from us is sad, and he not the first young person nor will he be the last, this senseless killing needs to stop.' Both killings had been linked to street gang culture with Daejaun described as being exploited and groomed by older youths. Daejaun was allegedly targeted for a 'gang check' when he was spotted near a house the defendants were visiting. Prosecutor Mukul Chawla KC had said he was attacked by Balaz and the 17-year-old boy. He said a witness had heard Daejaun screaming and calling for 'help' as he was stabbed. He also threw a large knife that he was carrying although it appears to have only hit a metal fence or railing and broken into pieces, the court had heard. The 17-year-old attacker was caught on video dropping his machete and leaning down to pick it up as he made off. Daejaun fell to his knees in the street having suffered two stab wounds and six superficial cuts. Losiewicz had driven the others to the scene and was nearby, the court had heard. Mr Chawla told jurors the motive for the killing was unclear but that Daejaun had been carrying money and drugs, possibly crack cocaine. He said: '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. 'That may be or may have been the reason why he was attacked.' The two older defendants admitted being at the scene but denied being involved in Daejaun's killing. The 17-year-old youth admitted the killing but claimed he acted in self defence and alone. He had previously pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon – a machete – in a public place. The 17-year-old also had previous convictions for carrying a 'kukri' style knife in 2021 and having a machete and affray relating to a fight in October 2023 in which a male suffered a cut to his face and a stab wound. The court heard Balaz had previous convictions for carrying knives and possession of cannabis. Mr Losiewicz had no convictions to his name.
The Independent
30-07-2025
- The Independent
Convictions after two young friends killed in machete attacks months apart
Two teenage friends aged just 14 and 15 were killed in gang-related machete attacks four months apart, it can now be reported. Daejaun Campbell cried out 'I'm 15, don't let me die' after he was ambushed in Woolwich, south-east London, on September 22 last year, the Old Bailey heard. On Wednesday, a boy aged 17, was found guilty of his murder after a jury deliberated for more than 19 hours. Co-accused Marko Balaz, 19, from Abbey Wood, south-east London, was found not guilty of murder, but convicted of manslaughter. A third defendant, Jacob Losiewicz, 18, also from Abbey Wood, was cleared of wrongdoing. It can now be reported that Daejaun was friends with 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa, who was fatally stabbed by two 16-year-old boys with machetes on a bus in Woolwich months later on January 7. Aspiring rapper Kelyan, nicknamed Grippa, had featured in a YouTube music video entitled Gotta Eat – in which he was seen crouching beside a floral tribute to Daejaun. Last Friday, two 16-year-old youths were detained for at least 15 years and 10 months after pleading guilty at the Old Bailey to Kelyan's murder. The two boys' murders, though not directly related, bore striking similarities and have resulted in pleas by their families to end the 'senseless killings'. Last week, Kelyan's mother Marie Bokassa made an appeal for authorities to do more to stop the violence, saying: 'Our streets at bleeding.' In the wake of Daejaun's murder, his family released a statement in which Daejaun was described as 'naturally gifted, intelligent, creative and musically talented'. They said: 'The brutal manner which Daejaun was taken away from us is sad, and he not the first young person nor will he be the last, this senseless killing needs to stop.' Both killings had been linked to street gang culture with Daejaun described as being exploited and groomed by older youths. Daejaun was allegedly targeted for a 'gang check' when he was spotted near a house the defendants were visiting. Prosecutor Mukul Chawla KC had said he was attacked by Balaz and the 17-year-old boy. He said a witness had heard Daejaun screaming and calling for 'help' as he was stabbed. He also threw a large knife that he was carrying although it appears to have only hit a metal fence or railing and broken into pieces, the court had heard. The 17-year-old attacker was caught on video dropping his machete and leaning down to pick it up as he made off. Daejaun fell to his knees in the street having suffered two stab wounds and six superficial cuts. Losiewicz had driven the others to the scene and was nearby, the court had heard. Mr Chawla told jurors the motive for the killing was unclear but that Daejaun had been carrying money and drugs, possibly crack cocaine. He said: '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. 'That may be or may have been the reason why he was attacked.' The two older defendants admitted being at the scene but denied being involved in Daejaun's killing. The 17-year-old youth admitted the killing but claimed he acted in self defence and alone. He had previously pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon – a machete – in a public place. The 17-year-old also had previous convictions for carrying a 'kukri' style knife in 2021 and having a machete and affray relating to a fight in October 2023 in which a male suffered a cut to his face and a stab wound. The court heard Balaz had previous convictions for carrying knives and possession of cannabis. Mr Losiewicz had no convictions to his name.
Telegraph
28-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The prolific criminals making a mockery of Britain's justice system
Each morning, on his way to work, Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, reads a log of the incidents in which police have been involved in the capital over the previous 24 hours. On Tuesday, a significant chunk of his officers' time was spent 'chasing round a teenager who's been involved in machete attacks' and who had 'previously been arrested for firearms and machete offences', said Sir Mark. He went on to describe how, despite this being a repeat offence, the system had failed to keep this young man off the streets. 'We sought his remand in custody. Even under the current system he was eventually bailed,' Sir Mark said in an interview on Radio 4's Today programme. 'He skipped his bail on his tag, we've put massive resources into chasing him round; he's been caught with a machete again. That's going on day in, day out.' Sir Mark did not say how many times the teenager with the machete had been arrested before. But this example illustrates how Britain's criminal justice system has become a revolving door for the most prolific criminals. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics show that just 10 per cent of criminals are responsible for around half of all offences. Meanwhile, thousands of prisoners have been released early under a Labour scheme that started in September last year to address an overcrowding crisis in prisons. Sir Mark put the issue of 'hyper-prolific' offenders at the centre of a remarkable public intervention by senior officers this week. Six of the country's most senior police chiefs, including the Met Commissioner, wrote an article in The Times newspaper, issuing a direct plea to the Government to make 'substantial investments to bolster police officer numbers, grow specialist police staff nationally and enact major police reforms'. Police have separately told the Government that they will need an extra £300 million in Rachel Reeves' first spending review on June 11. Without it, they argue, Labour's ambitious targets to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade will not be met. There are likely to be more challenges to come. An independent sentencing review by David Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, published last week by the Government, proposes that some prisoners should be released after serving just one third of their sentences and that custodial sentences of less than 12 months should be largely scrapped. As a result of Gauke's recommendations, which were accepted by ministers almost wholesale, even more policing power will be needed to tackle offenders who would previously have been in prison – and, many argue, should still be behind bars. Sir Mark said he does not take the decision to wade into politics 'lightly'. But a stretched police force is in no fit state to take on a new wave of early releases, given reoffending rates stand at around 30 per cent. 'Every time you put an offender in the community, a proportion of them will commit crime [and] will need chasing down by the police,' Sir Mark said. Meanwhile, the decision to release prisoners early, under the current scheme, was made 'without any analysis of the impact on policing whatsoever'. Worryingly, statistics show criminals with multiple offences are no more likely to be jailed than first-time offenders – a phenomenon dubbed 'more crime, less time'. According to research from the Policy Exchange think tank published in 2023, less than half of 'hyper-prolific' offenders (those who have 45 or more previous convictions) and less than a quarter of 'prolific' offenders (those with 16 previous convictions or more) are sent to prison when convicted of offences that are sufficiently serious to be tried in a Crown Court. Since 2007, roughly 50,000 career criminals with over 50 previous convictions have been spared jail, including 4,000 people who had over 100 previous convictions, according to MoJ data obtained via parliamentary questions. Astonishingly, when Conservative MP and shadow education minister Neil O'Brien crunched the numbers, he found that MoJ statistics show people convicted of theft, drug offences and common assault and battery were handed shorter sentences if they had a greater number of previous offences. 'A massive chunk of crime is caused by a small minority of criminals,' says O'Brien. 'A lot of these people will be the people who would be handed short sentences, which are now set to be banned. They will be out in the community, able to cause even more misery and commit even more crime… policy is going in literally the wrong direction.' Striking examples of hyper-prolific offenders avoiding jail include Tanya Liddle, who in October last year avoided prison for her 172nd conviction (most of which were theft-related), and Carey Lyons, who in 2023 was handed a suspended sentence after being convicted of 15 charges of possessing indecent images of children, despite having a staggering 100 previous convictions, many of them for sex offences. Craig Nicholson, from Gateshead, meanwhile, was given a community order rather than a custodial sentence for theft in 2023, despite 343 previous convictions. Similarly, Warren Russell, from the Isle of Wight, was in 2022 given an eight-week suspended sentence for theft, despite racking up 115 previous convictions, mainly for shoplifting. Is the solution simply more money for policing, as Sir Mark and his colleagues are appealing for? Many of the arguments made by the police chiefs on Tuesday have been made repeatedly over the last decade – albeit largely behind closed doors – to both Conservative ministers and their Labour successors. In the same radio interview, Sir Mark said policing is 'carrying the scar tissue of years of austerity cuts and the effects of that. Forces are much smaller when you compare the population they're policing than they were a decade or 15 years ago.' While the overall police budget has increased by 5 per cent (up to £889 million) for the next financial year, demand for police resources is rising by 5 per cent a year nationwide, according to Sir Mark: 'Five per cent more people are calling 999 looking for help from police. That's a massive number, and that compounds year on year.' O'Brien recognises the significance of this 'extraordinary' intervention from police chiefs, but disagrees that funding is the sole issue. 'What the police are doing and how their time is used is as relevant as total resources,' he says. 'It's not just non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), but how much time police spend attending mental health incidents, sitting in A&E, and being stuck in bureaucracy.' Meanwhile, an increasing number of potentially dangerous 'prolific' offenders will be released early – or else, avoid jail entirely. 'There is genuine and widespread concern about the impact of the sentencing review on community safety in an already overloaded system,' says Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and director of community safety at the Home Office. 'The police have had more money, this is true, but compared to population growth per capita they are seriously underfunded.' Sir Keir Starmer came to power last summer with ambitious aims for the criminal justice system: to ' take back our streets ', halve serious violence, and tackle violence against women and girls. The blame can't be placed solely at the door of the current Government for the status quo. 'We have a system that is falling apart – feral, violent, and awash with drugs,' says Acheson. 'Labour have inherited this mess – for once, that's true.' It won't be fixed, however, until more crime means more time, not less.
