Knife and gun crime in London

Am I alone in not finding Transport For London's "99%" poster campaign on youth violence in London particularly reassuring?


"99%" of young Londoners do not commit serious crimes of violence" is the message.

Well, assuming that this statistic is true, it means that 1% of London's youth do commit serious crimes of violence.

There are a lot of young people in London.

1% of a lot is...a lot.

More on the same tragic theme:

Four quizzed over schoolboy's death12 April 2011


A relative waits to lay flowers at the scene of a boy's fatal stabbing in Edmonton, north London (PA)
Police are questioning four suspects after a schoolboy was killed while "selflessly protecting" his younger brother.

Detectives are hunting up to nine gang members following the death of 15-year-old Negus McClean.

Four males, aged 14, 16, 18 and 20, have been arrested over his death, while relatives have paid tearful tributes to the aspiring musician.

Family members hit out at the "disgusting act of violence", but vowed to pray for Negus's killers.

His cousin, Noel, called for an end to knife crime. Fighting back tears after laying flowers at the scene of the attack in Edmonton, north London, the 25-year-old described Negus as "intelligent, mature and selfless".

"He was dying protecting his brother," he said. "It was a selfless act. He paid with his life."

Speaking at the scene, Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Clayman said Negus died after being chased by "seven, eight or nine" youths riding bikes.

Relatives and a host of school friends arrived to lay flowers as teachers and friends of the teenager came forward to pay tribute to him.

Noel, who declined to give his surname, said: "It was just a disgusting act of violence. I pray that a change happens, I pray for the guy that did this to my cousin."

Negus was preparing to celebrate his 16th birthday in two weeks' time and was hoping to embark on a career as a rapper after leaving school, relatives said.

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Three more arrests over boy's death

16 April 2011


Negus McClean was stabbed to death in north London last Sunday

Three teenage boys have been arrested on suspicion of murdering a 15-year-old aspiring rapper thought to have been killed while protecting his younger brother.

Negus McClean died from a stab wound to the heart on Sunday evening after being attacked in Edmonton, north London.

A 14-year-old, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old were detained earlier and are being held in police custody, Scotland Yard said.

It is believed that around 13 young black men, thought to have been on bicycles, chased Negus prior to the killing.

Two men aged 20 and 18 and two boys aged 16 and 14 have already been arrested over the killing and bailed pending further inquiries.

The 16-year-old is due to return to a north London police station on Monday and the other three were bailed to return to a north London police station on May 6.

Officers were called at 7.25pm on Sunday to Westminster Road, where local boy Negus had been stabbed in the chest and thigh.

The victim's cousin Noel, 25, said he died protecting his brother in a "selfless act".

Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Clayman said: "We continue to seek witnesses and those with information about who was responsible for this murder. It is vital that the public, and especially young people, have the trust and confidence to speak to the police in these situations."

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^

This type of incident is a comparatively new phenomenon in London- dating back, perhaps, to the last 15-20 years or so- new enough for people of my generation to still find it shocking.

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First thread replicated below in the event of link expiry:

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^ Study the map above.

My usual route home from work when I'm on the "Dead Late" shift is to take a train to Mile End Tube station at about 1am and walk around the corner to Burdett Road where I catch a bus which drops me almost at my doorstep.

The other night, bleary-eyed and much fatigued, I was very irritated to discover on emerging from the Tube station that the entire pavement (US trans: sidewalk) area from the Tube station to my bus stop on Burdett Road had been sealed off with blue-and-white plastic police incident tape.

This meant that I had to walk in the roadway, keeping a wary (and weary) eye out for passing traffic and negotiate a couple of unscheduled road crossings to make it to the D7/277 bus stop on Burdett Road

On the corner of Mile End and Burdett Road stands the La Boheme nightclub, a favouite weekend haunt of the local yoof, and I vaguely registered that the pavement on that street corner was strewn with debris of various kinds.

But that was about it...my only real concern was getting home to bed.

Imagine then my shame when I passed the same street corner today on the way to the supermarket to discover the railings embellished with cellophane-wrapped floral tributes to a young man stabbed fatally through the heart outside La Boheme on that very night.

I paused to read the accompanying texts, painfully inscribed by his friends and family in black biro on crumpled scraps of paper precariously attached to the flowers with rubber bands:

HE DIDN'T DESERVE THIS

LOCK THEM UP AND THROW AWAY THE KEY

There was more grief and raw emotion on those crude, badly-lettered scaps of paper than you'll find in most Literature.

I thought about the thread I'd started in the ATU Paintings & Photography section the other day: "On Suffering: Bruegel's Fall of Icarus and WH Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts".

At the exact same time I'd been cursing the inconvenience of the police incident tape, this young man's lifeless body was on its way to the Morgue.

Ashamed, I crossed the road to Budgen's supermarket and got on with the shopping.

Eddie wrote:

THE EAST LONDON ADVERTISER reports:

Clubber stabbed to death in Mile End club named as rapper Kelvin ‘Smegz’ Easton

By Nadia Sam-Daliri

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The 23-year-old clubber stabbed to death at an East End nightclub over the weekend has been named.



Rapper Kelvin Easton was pronounced dead at 4.30am on Sunday after collapsing in a stairwell in Boheme nightclub in Mile End Road.

A postmortem gave cause of death as a stab wound to the heart.

The rapper, who performed under the name Smegz and had several videos on You Tube, was said to have got into a fight with another man before being attacked.

Boheme bosses said in a statement he was lunged at with a champagne bottle.

The club has an uneasy history with residents in the area.

Many have complained about noise, parking problems and fights outside the premises and monthly meetings between the club’s bosses and residents were set up to resolve the problems.

Tower Hamlets police are now applying for the club’s licence to be suspended as a review into the running of the venue is held.

It will be closed for 28 days while the review is carried out.

Just a week before the stabbing the club was fined £6,000 for covering Tower Hamlets in illegal posters.

The owners failed to turn up to hearing on Friday March 18 at Thames magistrates’ court but in their absence were found guilty for ten offences of fly posting and one offence of fly tipping.

Last summer the company plastered the borough with hundreds of illegal posters.

Mile End Residents’ Association said it has had a dialogue with the club’s bosses but added that many residents were extremely concerned about the latest incident.

It said serious questions about the management of the club must be asked if it is found that a knife was smuggled in.

Four men have been arrested in connection with the death.

A 27-year-old man was arrested on Sunday and three men, aged 25, 23 and 17 were arrested on Monday.

All have been bailed to return to east and north London police stations on May 17.

Detectives are appealing for witnesses and asking anyone with information to come forward.

Call 020 8345 4142 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Vital CCTV footage stolen from club moments after rapper’s stabbing

By Nadia Sam-Daliri

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Vital CCTV footage was stolen from the security room of an east London club moments after a rapper was stabbed to death there.


Kelvin Easton.

Boheme nightclub on Mile End Road has been closed down after police uncovered security lapses following the death of Tottenham rapper Kelvin Easton in the early hours of Sunday.

Officers warned that the club “lost what could have been a vital piece of evidence” in their application to Tower Hamlets council for a licence suspension.

The clubber, who was known as Smegz and had several music videos on You Tube, was stabbed in the heart.

He collapsed in the stairwell after being attacked with a champagne bottle, the club said in a statement.

Just after the stabbing, a clubber was given access to the security office by Bohme staff and went on to steal the CCTV hard-drive.

The report said: “Despite the fact that this man is not a member of staff and unknown to him, he took the man into the room where it is kept.”

Police also fear security staff failed to pick up weapons with the search arch and metal detector wands which they must use on every punter as a condition of their licence.

Boheme has an uneasy history in the area, with those living nearby complaining about noise, parking problems and fights.

Monthly meetings between the club’s bosses and residents were set up to resolve the problems.

Sonja Besford, who lives close to the club, said: “We want it to shut down. We’ve had to deal with noise, drugs and now this.”

Benn Wilson and Dante Williams, who run Boheme, said in a statement: “We will be working alongside the police using our in house ID scan to ensure that the person responsible is caught.”

Earlier this month the club was fined £6,000 for plastering Tower Hamlets with hundreds of illegal posters.

The owners failed to turn up to hearing on Friday March 18 at Thames magistrates’ court but were found guilty of ten offences of fly posting and one of fly tipping.

Mile End Residents’ Association said it has had a dialogue with the club’s bosses but added that many residents were extremely concerned about the latest incident.

Lene Milaa, secretary, said: “Serious questions must be asked if it turns out that a knife was smuggled in.”

Four men have been arrested in connection with the death.

A 27-year-old was arrested on Sunday and three others, aged 25, 23 and a 17 were arrested on Monday.

All have been bailed to return to east and north London police stations on May 17.

Detectives are appealing for witnesses.

Call 020 8345 4142 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Eddie wrote:

Horrific as it was, the incident reported above is not the most shocking youth Knife Crime incident to occur in the UK recently.

It registered strongly with me because it happened on my manor.

This recent case in the Midlands was far more disturbing:

Man arrested after 14-year-old girl is stabbed outside school gates

West Midlands police say Chloe West is in serious but stable condition after knife attack in Wollaston, Stourbridge

Helen Carter guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 April 2011 19.17 BST



Chloe West was stabbed nine times in the face and upper body. Photograph: Caters News Agency

A 14-year-old girl was airlifted to hospital after she was stabbed by a man outside a secondary school.

Chloe West suffered nine knife wounds to her upper body and face outside Ridgewood high school in Wollaston, Stourbridge, according to police in Dudley, West Midlands. Officers said her injuries were serious but that she was in a stable condition last night.

Teachers, parents and other students are believed to have subdued and sat on her attacker until police arrived.

An 18-year-old man was arrested. Police said the suspect was known to Chloe.

It was alleged that the attacker was angry because his text messages had not been returned.

The 14-year-old was airlifted to Birmingham children's hospital, north of Stourbridge, after the attack, which happened at around 8.40am.

The school was shut for the day while police investigated. A Volkswagen Golf believed to have been used by the attacker was removed from the scene.

Chloe's parents, Rosemary and Nigel West, are distraught, according to neighbours.

Praising the quick-thinking teachers, parents and students who sat on the attacker, Superintendent Stuart Johnson from West Midlands police said: "I would just like to pay tribute to the very brave individuals who, without too much thought for their own safety, intervened at the time of the incident this morning.

"They showed tremendous bravery in intervening and actually detaining the suspect. In my opinion, based on medical evidence, they clearly prevented far more serious injuries to Chloe."

Officers were at the scene within minutes of the stabbing by the main gates. Johnson said: "On arrival, they saw that there was indeed a young lady, who we since know to be a pupil at the school, with serious injuries, believed to be knife wounds.

"They also found that a young man, who we have since established does not attend the school, had been detained by members of the public here in the street."

Johnson said the injuries to Chloe's upper body and face were no longer life threatening and that she was conscious.

Wollaston councillor Margaret Cowell, who lives nearby, said: "I've lived here 50 years and in all that time I've never heard a police car go up with its sirens on."

Ridgewood's head, Clive Nutting, said: "Police were called to the school today before 8.50am after one of the pupils was attacked on their way to school."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Earlier today I popped down to the shops.

There I am strolling along the pavement towards the Chemist next door to Mile End Tube station mentally rehearsing my shopping list...

Pack of 10 Bic disposable razors.
4-pack of Imperial Leather soap.
Mouthwash
Nurofen.
Vitamins

...when yelling and screaming from the opposite side of Bow Road, busy with afternoon traffic, alerts me that something is kicking off and I look over.

4-5 black teenage boys are beating each other up with 3-foot metal rods. The fight spills into the road, stopping the traffic. My fellow pedestrians gawp, like myself, in disbelief. This is broad daylight. There are dozens of witnesses.

I enter the Chemist, make my purchases and moan to the nice old Indian lady behind the counter about the state of the world.

When I come out of the shop, the police have arrived but the boys have legged it. One policeman is holding the metal rods. The other is questioning the people at the bus stop.

I look at the nearby lamp posts and traffic signs, plastered with police appeals for witnesses to two murders:

The young rapper (above) stabbed through the heart.
A man in his 40's shot in Knapp Road, about 5 minutes walk from my flat.

I go home.

I lock the door.

Murder of teen 'as bad as it gets'
July 03, 2011


Yemurai Kanyangarara, 16, who was stabbed to death in Welling, south-east London (MPS/PA)

The murder of a teenage boy stabbed to death in the street is "about as bad as it gets", a senior detective has said.

The killing of Yemurai Kanyangarara was among the worst he had investigated in 25 years, said Detective Chief Inspector Mark Dunne.

Onlookers have described blood "pouring" out of the 16-year-old's neck moments after he was attacked.

One witness said he watched the boy's life "slip away" as he lay on the pavement on Upper Wickham Lane in Welling, south-east London. The victim came from nearby Belvedere.

DCI Dunne told reporters: "You've got someone 16- years-old, a schoolboy, being stabbed in broad daylight in a busy street in front of many many shoppers out enjoying the afternoon, it's about as bad as it gets. It's among the very worst I've investigated in 25 years, the sheer brutality against a defenceless schoolboy."

The officer told how the victim, who was brought to Britain from Zimbabwe when he was a toddler, stepped off a 96 bus with a friend and was attacked, probably within a matter of seconds.

Three boys who had been in a group of five or six who had got off another 96 at an earlier stop a few minutes before had walked on to the stop where Yemurai and his friend got off their bus. Yemurai and his friend had been in a group of four but the other two got off the bus shortly before.

"The three boys off the first bus approached them, and one has taken a weapon out of his clothing and stabbed the victim just once in the neck. This has caused catastrophic injuries, it seems he has died very quickly after that."

DCI Dunne was unable to confirm whether the weapon was a knife. Police so far have no clear motive for the attack, but DCI Dunne said it was suspected that the people who attacked Yemurai knew him.

The victim was a pupil at St Columba's Catholic Boys' School in Bexleyheath, but DCI Dunne said he was dismissing suggestions of a rift between that school and another.

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Hood Rat by Gavin Knight – review

A study of gang culture is unflinching in its portrayal of violence but lacks social context

Andrew Anthony The Observer, Sunday 10 July 2011


Young gang members in Brixton, London. Photograph: Jamie Wiseman/Associated Newspapers

Throughout history, young men have fought senseless territorial battles, but over the past two decades Britain has seen an alarming growth in lethal youth gang violence. Stories of drive-by shootings and teen killings, once thought of as distantly American, now arrive with dispiriting regularity from our own inner cities.


Hood Rat by Gavin Knight

In the majority of cases the perpetrators are male and black (as are their victims) and almost without exception they are products of dysfunctional backgrounds with poor expectations and limited education. Often the most reliable employment for young urban Britons is the illicit drug economy, with all its inflationary brutality and social corrosion.

But once these bald facts have been established, where can the story go? There are arguments to be made about reforming drug laws, improving housing, raising educational standards and fostering a stronger sense of social inclusion. But what can be said of the gang members themselves, their core values and codes of behaviour, that doesn't simply rehash gangsta rap cliches?

Gavin Knight's Hood Rat is an unflinching account of life and death in the sink estates of Britain. It penetrates environments that most of us only glimpse in local news reports, and addresses the kind of people that we fear encountering on a dark night or, indeed, a bright afternoon. The question is, does it amount to genuine insight?

The book contains plenty of shocking anecdotes but few if any surprises. Anyone, for example, who followed the recent case of Santra Gayle, the north London 15-year-old who was hired to kill a stranger for £200, will be aware of the phenomenon of teenage hitmen. That's no reason not to look deeper into the circumstances and motivations that lead adolescents to become assassins, but Knight seems less concerned with depth than focus.

He writes in an elliptical, impressionistic style, jumping around, stealing into the minds of young men and their police pursuers (we're given access to a drug dealer's concerns, a hitman's internal monologue, a cop's marital crisis). The book strives for a kind of urgent authenticity. The sentences are short and simple and framed in a relentless present tense that makes few compromises to chronology.

Knight is at his strongest in offering a gang member's eye-view of the world, the sense of danger a street in the wrong postcode represents, the need to present a confident front, and the self-glorifying yet self-nullifying acceptance that career prospects are a choice between prison and death.

Yet there is a persistent suspicion that some of the reported conversations, and perhaps even the characters themselves, are not entirely genuine. This is partly a result of the dialogue itself, which is sometimes rather too conveniently heavy on exposition, but also inherent in a form that might be called semi-fictionalised non-fiction.

Knight spent extended periods "embedded" with police anti-gang units in Manchester, London and Glasgow. My advance copy came with the legend "everything you read in here is true" emblazoned on its back, while a note to the reader at the front pointed out that: "Various names, nicknames, times, dates and identifying personal characteristics have been changed, and some characters created from composites of several people." So it's not all true. This isn't just nitpicking. Given the paucity of conventional portraits that might help us engage with the plight of the young men Knight records, it sort of matters that we know that their thoughts are real and accurate and, more importantly, belong to a real individual rather than some composite construction. As it is, as each stabbing, shooting and gang attack is recounted in spare, repetitive detail, they merge into one pumped-up image of mindless violence that is crushingly familiar.

Perhaps this is the point. Perhaps all young gang members are in some sense interchangeable: all trapped by the narrowness of their horizons. If so, it doesn't require 300 pages of razor slashings and head stampings to make the case. And I don't actually think that was Knight's intention.

The book's biggest drawback is that there seems to be a confusion of purpose. Call it the Ross Kemp dilemma, getting that balance between including enough violence to attract the real-crime audience and enough social context to be considered worthy of being taken seriously.

In the final chapter, Knight seems to lurch towards seriousness by taking a look at the work of Karyn McCluskey. She set up a project in Glasgow, based on a similar scheme in Boston, that brought various involved bodies together to liaise with and confront gang members. Statistics suggest that in both cases the approach led to a sharp reduction in violence.

Glasgow is an interesting case study for several reasons, not the least of them being that its gang members are nearly all white. A clear-eyed, historically literate understanding of the city's gang problem could tell us something specific about Glasgow while also shedding light on wider issues of youth violence.

Knight seems to know this, but again he lets the emotive form get the better of informed content. The result is that many readers will finish the book not much wiser about gang violence than before they started.

Two weeks ago the late-turn Station Supervisor at Bromley-by-Bow station gets a call from the Line Controller saying that they'd received reports of a man with an axe running up and down Platform 2 at his station, screaming. Could he go and investigate?

"Not fucking likely" (trans: LU jargon), says the Station Supervisor, "but I'll monitor the situation on cctv and get back to you. Stand by...."

To cut a long story short, the mad axe-man leads the British transport police a merry dance, dodging on and off various trains up and down the line until he's finally cornered by Her Majesty's Finest, disarmed, sat upon and carted off to the loony bin.

An Asian chap apparently, who had painted himself black and drank a bottle of methylated spirits before running amok.

Query: the phrase "running amok"...Burmese derivation? Isn't that what the natives in colonial Rangoon used to do periodically in the local market place? Slash randomly at passers-by...but with swords, I think, rather than axes?

Two boys held in Leroy murder probe

August 19, 2011


Leroy James was stabbed to death in Ponders End recreation ground in Enfield, north London

Two teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of murdering a 14-year-old boy who died in a pool of blood near a playground.

The boys, aged 14 and 15, are being held in police custody following the stabbing of Leroy James, Scotland Yard said.

The victim was left slumped against a park wall after the incident in Enfield, north London, on Wednesday as young children played nearby.

Leroy's father, also called Leroy, said that his son "will forever be remembered". Attending the scene of the murder, he said he was "just trying to keep sane".

When asked how the youngster would be remembered among his friends and family, his father added: "I can't explain for his friends, but he will forever be remembered by me."

Mr James, from Edmonton Green, said he was due to take the boy to Jamaica to see his mother in December, and Leroy was looking forward to it. "He was a pretty quiet boy," he said. "He didn't really talk much."

With two further teenage stabbings in Oxford Street - Britain's busiest shopping area - on Wednesday night, Scotland Yard moved to dismiss fears that London was in the grip of a wave of gang violence.

Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Goode, the investigating officer, said: "There's certainly no evidence or any intelligence at this time that this is a gang-related murder."

Ms Goode said in an appeal held at the scene: "We know that the park was incredibly busy at the time of the incident and many more people may be able to help us with our investigation.

"Leroy James was a young person with hopes, ambitions and dreams. Someone has chosen to take those hopes and aspirations away and in doing so has robbed Leroy's family and friends of a much-loved young man. We urge anyone who can help to think about Leroy and their local community. We need to work together to solve this dreadful crime."

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First Witnesses Give Evidence At Lawrence Trial
Sky News




The first witnesses are due to give evidence in the trial of two men accused of killing teenager Stephen Lawrence 18 years ago.

Eyewitnesses from the night Stephen, 18, was killed in Eltham, south east London, in April 1993 will testify at the Old Bailey.

They include Stephen's friend Duwayne Brooks, who was waiting with him at the bus stop but managed to flee before the attack.

Gary Dobson, 36, and David Norris, 35, both of south London, are accused of the murder.

The jury has heard how a cold case forensic review found a previously undetected tiny stain of Stephen's blood on Dobson's jacket collar.

Prosecutor Mark Ellison QC said it was a one-in-a-billion match to the black teenager and showed Dobson was one of the gang who killed him in a racist attack.

He told the jury that the blood stain had not been found when the jacket was first examined when Dobson was arrested shortly after the murder.

But in a re-opened investigation in 2006, scientists used a new, slow and expensive technique involving a low-power microscope.

The court heard two of Stephen's hairs were found in a bag that contained Norris' jeans and seven fibres from Stephen's clothes were found on his sweatshirt.

Dobson and Norris deny murder. Their barristers told the jury that the clothing had been contaminated while in police custody.

Man stabbed to death in Oxford St
Press Association


A general view of police at the scene on Oxford Street where a man was stabbed to death today in broad daylight

A teenager has been stabbed to death in broad daylight in a shop as thousands of bargain hunters thronged one of Britain's busiest shopping streets.

The 18-year-old from south London was killed in the Foot Locker store on Oxford Street, London, as "hundreds of thousands" of people shopped nearby on the opening day of the post-Christmas sales, the Metropolitan Police said.

Police said it was too early to establish what the motive for the stabbing was.

Seven arrests have been made and a crime scene has been set up which runs from Duke Street to New Bond Street, near Bond Street underground station.

A forensics team erected a white tent in front of Foot Locker, overlooked by Christmas lights.

Confused Boxing Day bargain hunters and tourists were coming up to the police cordon to take pictures and ask officers what had happened.

Shoppers could be seen going in and out of shops near the crime scene, such as Debenhams and Zara, but a number of stores have been forced to close.

London Air Ambulance and London Ambulance Service attended the scene after police were called to reports of a stabbing, but the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

A spokeswoman for the New West End Company, which represents traders on Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street, declined to comment on the stabbing or the effect on retailers on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. But earlier, the company reported £15 million sales in the first three hours of the Boxing Day sales despite a drivers' strike on the London Underground.

Jace Tyrrell of the New West End Company said: "As ever, the West End's Boxing Day sales have attracted shoppers in their hundreds of thousands."

It's taken longer than the life-time of the victim to bring to Justice the killer of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
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Stephen Lawrence murder: Gary Dobson and David Norris get 15 and 14 years minimum
By Adam Parris-Long

Yahoo! News


Stephen Lawrence, killed in 1993.

Gary Dobson has been sentenced to a minumum of 15 years and David Norris to a minimum 14 years for the murder of Stephen Lawrence- who was killed in a racially motivated attack in Eltham, London in 1993.

A-Level student Stephen Lawrence was killed in on Well Hall Road, Eltham, London on 22 April 1993 when he was attacked by a group of white youths.

Dobson and Norris participated in the "group attack" that caused Lawrence's death. The pair were 17 and 16 at the time of the attack, forcing Mr Justice Treacy to sentence them as juveniles.

After a lengthy police operation the Lawrence family attempted a private prosecution of Dobson, Norris and three other suspects - Jamie Acourt, Neil Acourt and Luke Knight in - in 1994.

Charges against David Norris and Jamie Acourt were dropped while the other three were acquitted in court. A follow up inquiry found severe shortcomings in the Met response. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry found that "the investigation was marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers".


Gary Dobson (l) and David Norris (r)

Police reopened investigations into Stephen Lawrence's murder in 2007, using state of the art forensic technology to examine clothes taken from the suspects' homes in 1993. Evidence gathered from forensic tests allowed the arrests of David Norris and Gary Dobson on 7 September 2010, with both failing to respond to questioning put to them by police.

The pair were put on trial at the Old Bailey and the jury found them guilty in a unaminous verdict.

"We are very pleased for the family and those who loved Stephen," said Met acting deputy commissioner Cressida Dick after the conviction on Tuesday. "There have been several investigations over the last 18 years during which the Lawrence family have campaigned tirelessly for justice.

“This prosecution has depended upon previously unavailable scientific technology and techniques which led to the discovery of the new evidence.

The bloke on the right, Norris, lived with his parents in a mock tudor £700,000 house in Chislehurst. His father made all his money through drug dealing.

Crime doesn't pay, his father went to prison for 7 years and everything he had was sold and his wife left him. He is now on benefits and lives in 1 room in Ashford.

'Stephen Lawrence' by Carol Ann Duffy

Written by the poet laureate after the conviction of two men for the teenager's murder in 1993

Carol Ann Duffy

guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 January 2012 22.55 GMT

Cold pavement indeed
the night you died,
murdered;
but the airborne drop of blood
from your wound
was a seed
your mother sewed
into hard ground –
your life's length doubled,
unlived, stilled,
till one flower, thorned,
bloomed
in her hand,
love's just blade.