In the evening of 20/11/20oo, Nigerians learnt via the BBC, the death of a young Nigerian , Damilola Taylor who was just 10 years old in North Peckham Estate.
The next day all Nigerian newspapers carried the news of the death of Damilola who would have turned eleven 7/12/200 as their lead stories and devoted many days to demanding justice for the family of the deceased.
The Metropolitan police were accused of trying to shield the killers.
Today on the what would have been Damilola’s twenty-seventh birthday, Naijalog recalls to the event and what finally happened to his killers.
Damilola was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to Richard and Gloria Taylor (she died 8/4/2008)
In August 2000 Damilola with his family traveled to the United Kingdom.
When school started in September, Damilola enrolled at the Oliver Goldsmith Primary School in Peckham Estate.
Mark Parsons, the headmaster of the school at the time remembered him thus: “He was slowly making friends and settling into the school. He was a boisterous, fun, smiling boy. If I think about him I think of him smiling.”
On the day of his death , Damilola set off from Peckham Library at 4:51 pm to make his way home. He was captured on CCTV as he walked away. On approaching the North Peckham Estate he received a gash to his left thigh. Running to a stairwell, he collapsed and bled to near death in the space of approximately 30 minutes. He was still alive in an ambulance on his way to hospital.
Different forensic scientists have presented different events that could have given Taylor his fatal wounds. The theory accepted by the Metropolitan Police is that he was attacked and fell on a broken bottle, later bleeding to death. He died 10 days before his 11th birthday.
The police few days after his death, named four boys as suspects , two of which were 16-year-old brothers (Danny and Ricky Preddie), none were charged with the murder.
After a back and forth which lasted almost two years, the, four youths, went on trial for the first time at the Old Bailey for the murder of Damilola. The trial led to all four suspects being acquitted. Two were acquitted on the direction of the judge after he ruled that the prosecution’s key witness, a 14-year-old girl, was unreliable; the jury found the other two not guilty. As well as questioning the reliability of the young witness, the defence presented evidence suggesting that Taylor’s wounds were consistent with his falling on a broken bottle and that he had not been the victim of an attack
Despite the setback , new DNA techniques identified Damilola’s blood on the trainers of another suspect (not one of the first four suspects) and on the sweatshirt cuff of his brother Ricky Preddie. This led to a re-examination of the evidence obtained at the time of Taylor’s death (Ricky Preddie had wounds on his hand that could have been caused by broken glass, two witnesses said that the Preddie brothers had admitted to the crime in the weeks after Damilola’s death and fibres on the clothing of the Preddie brothers and a mugger called Hassan Jihad matched Damilola’s jersey). In 2005, fresh arrests were made, this time on charges of manslaughter.
On 24 January 2006, a second trial commenced, in the trial Alastair Wilson, associate clinical director at the Royal London Hospital and one of Britain’s top trauma experts, testified that he thought that Taylor had died after falling on a shard of glass.
On 29 March, the jury retired to consider its verdict. On 3 April, Jihad was cleared by the jury of all charges in relation to Damilola’s death. The jury could not reach a verdict on the charges of manslaughter against the two brothers, so they were set free, but with the possibility of a retrial on those charges. On 6 April, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that the two would be re-tried.
The retrial of the two brothers began on 23 June. The two brothers, then over 18, were named as Danny and Ricky Preddie, of Peckham, south London. Both defendants were very well known to police, being involved in multiple robberies.
On 9 August 2006, Ricky Gavin Preddie (born 1987, Lambeth, London) and Danny Charles Preddie (born 1988, Lambeth), after a 33-day retrial, were convicted of the manslaughter of Damilola Taylor.
During the retrial it was noted that, while the police did follow procedure collecting evidence, lapses occurred in the prosecution.
On 9 October 2006, an Old Bailey judge sentenced the Preddie brothers to eight years in youth custody for manslaughter.
Although it was widely reported in the media that Taylor’s parents were unhappy that the sentences had not been longer, the judge, Mr Justice Goldring, went to some lengths to explain the factors he was forced to take into account. These included the age of the offenders at the time (12 and 13), and that there was no evidence to suggest that there had been a plan to kill Taylor. In addition, the weapon used had not been carried to the scene of the crime, but was found lying on the ground.
Both brothers were set to be paroled in 2010 after serving half of their sentence. Ricky was released on 8 September 2010, subject to probation supervision, and subject to recall to custody if he breached the conditions or if his behaviour indicated that it was no longer safe to allow him to remain in the community. Ricky was reported in 2010 to have told his mother he was deeply sorry for killing Damilola. Danny was released in 2011.Ricky was recalled on 13 March 2011 because he was seen in Peckham, and associating with gang members, both contrary to his parole conditions. He was released again on 25 January 2012. However, he was again recalled to prison in February 2012 after a stolen motorbike was discovered at his bail hostel, breaching the terms of release.
If Damilola were alive today he would have been twenty-seven , and may have become someone helping to develop the economy of Nigeria.
May his soul continue to
rest in peace.