Who was Damilola Taylor and how did he die?

DAMILOLA Taylor was stabbed to death while walking home from a library in Peckham.

The senseless killing of the 10-year-old from south London shocked the nation.

Who was Damilola Taylor?

Damilola Taylor was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and attended Wisdom Montessori School.

He travelled to the UK with his family to allow his sister Gbemi to get treatment for her epilepsy.

The family had barely moved to Britain for a better life when Damilola was cruelly killed on November 27, 2000.

Despite two unsuccessful trials, Richard and Gloria Taylor never gave up on the police or the British justice system.

On March 23, 2024, Damilola's father Richard passed away aged 75 following a battle with prostate cancer.

How did Damilola Taylor die?

Harrowing CCTV footage from the night the ten-year-old died shows him leaving Peckham Library at 4.51pm.

Damilola looked happy as he skipped home with a smile on his face — just 15 minutes later he was bleeding to death in a filthy stairwell.

The schoolboy was approaching the North Peckham Estate when he was stabbed in the leg with a piece of broken glass.

He ran to a concrete stairwell where he collapsed and was dead within 30 minutes.

Damilola was just ten days away from celebrating his 11th birthday when he was killed.

Star Wars actor John Boyega and his sister Grace were among the last people to be spotted on the CCTV footage with Damilola — they escorted him part of the way home.

The three were friends and the Boyegas helped babysit Damilola.

Who killed Damilola Taylor?

After Damilola's death, it took six years and three trials to identify and convict his killers.

In 2002, four boys went on trial at the Old Bailey charged with Damilola's murder.

But two of the boys were found not guilty and the other two were acquitted when it was ruled that a 14-year-old girl, who was the prosecution's key witness, was unreliable.

Speaking outside the Old Bailey after the case, Richard and Gloria Taylor vowed to continue fighting for justice.

In 2005, Ricky Preddie, 13 at the time of the killing, was charged along with his younger brother Danny, who was 12, when forensic evidence, missed at the time, revealed tiny blood spots and fibres.

They were eventually convicted of manslaughter in 2006 and sentenced to eight years in youth custody — but were released in 2011 and 2010 respectively.

Who are Danny and Ricky Preddie?

The brothers were members of a gang known as the Young Peckham Boys and, by the ages of 12 and 13, were terrorising the streets of south London.

Danny was rarely out of supervision or detention, and at the time of Damilola's killing should have been subject to a 24-hour curfew in a social services home.

Four weeks after the killing, Danny Preddie was placed under a supervision order for assault with intent to rob and two cases of racially aggravated assault. He breached the order.

Ricky Preddie also had a history of violence and theft and was supposed to have been under supervision when the schoolboy was killed.