Two youths have confessed to killing a 14-year-old boy in a machete attack on a London bus while he was journeying home from school.
Aspiring rapper Kelyan Bokassa was stabbed 27 times as he travelled on a Route 472 bus in Woolwich, South East London, on the afternoon of January 7.
Emergency services were summoned to the scene at approximately 2.30 pm, but Kelyan died soon after medics arrived having suffered a severed femoral artery.
As part of an extraordinary public plea for information, Scotland Yard released CCTV footage and identified two lads.
They were arrested on January 15 after a manhunt by Metropolitan Police officers and charged the following day.
The defendants, both aged 16, appeared at the Old Bailey for a plea hearing.
The two admitted to possessing a knife on Woolwich Church Street and killing Kelyan.
Relatives of Kelyan gasped and appeared tearful as they sat metres away from the dock where the two boys sat flanked by officers.
A minor delay in reporting the case resulted from one of the boys’ barristers requesting time to talk with his client due to what seemed to be an unexpected plea.
Afterwards, the youth returned to court and confirmed his guilty plea.
Judge Mark Lucraft KC ordered reports ahead of sentencing on July 25.
At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Tom Little KC said the victim was sitting on the back seat of the bus on the upper deck when he was attacked by two youths both armed with ‘lengthy machetes’.
The defendants knew in advance of the presence of Kelyan when they boarded the bus and walked directly towards him, the court was told.
Mr Little said: ‘It is clear this is not a form of spontaneous incident. The two defendants must have known the deceased was on the bus.
‘They approach him and almost instantaneously, the two of them pull out machetes and attacked the deceased.
‘He is stabbed or attempted to be stabbed on a total of 27 occasions before the defendants made their way off the bus.’
After being dumped into the Thames River, one of the machetes was eventually found.
Both defendants remained at large for a few days before being arrested.
Both had prior convictions, one of which was for carrying a knife in public. When the murder occurred, one had a referral order in effect.
Due to their ages, the defendants cannot be identified.
However, Judge Lucraft indicated he would hear a media application to lift the reporting restriction at their sentencing hearing.
Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Lee from the specialist crime unit, who led the Metropolitan Police’s investigation, said: ‘Today I wish to express my team’s heartfelt sympathies to Kelyan’s family.
‘The brutal and senseless attack on Kelyan has deeply impacted his friends, the wider community and everyone that has worked tirelessly to identify, arrest and prosecute those responsible.
‘I hope Kelyan’s family can take some solace in this outcome but I know they remain deeply bereft at the waste of three young lives.’
An inquest in January heard members of the public attempted to help Kelyan after he was stabbed.
Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Lee said that police were called at around 2.28 pm on January 7 by a bus driver reporting a stabbing on the bus.
She said police understand that Kelyan boarded the bus at 2.06 pm at North Greenwich train station and then two male suspects boarded the vehicle at 2.26 pm.
DCI Lee continued: ‘They went up to the top deck where Kelyan was sitting and they immediately attacked him.
‘Members of the public who were boarded on the bus called for help and asked the driver to stop, which he did, on Woolwich Church Street, and the suspects fled the bus.
‘A number of passengers tried to help Kelyan. He came down the stairs and they placed him on a seat on the lower deck.’
She said the bus driver called for aid, and police and London Ambulance Service attended, but Kelyan could not be saved and he died at the scene.
At a vigil held in January at a church overlooking the bus stop where he was stabbed, one of Kelyan’s friends said the boy had a ‘pure heart’ and would ‘always be there for you’.
If these youths are old enough to kill someone in cold blood, they are old enough to be named, and if they were old enough to take a life, then a life sentence is what they deserve.
Unfortunately, there are no deterrents anymore, which is why we have an epidemic of criminality, and they should be sentenced as adults, age is no excuse where murder is concerned, particularly at their age.
This happens far too frequently these days and knife crime is out of control here in the UK. Stop and search needs to come back, with loads more police on the streets, and if you carry a blade, then it needs to be a minimum of 5 years in prison.
But our government is afraid of being sued for racism, so they won’t do it, but they should be searching all youths, male and female, because it’s another species we have spawned, and it will get worse now that they know all prisons are full to the brim and they believe they can get away with it!
Policing is all wrong, and they have got their priorities all wrong. All we have to do is post something someone doesn’t like and the police are booting our doors down for hurting someone’s precious little feelings. Oh, do behave everybody needs to get off their ‘woke horse.’ What if it was your son or daughter that had been killed, you wouldn’t be so ‘woke’ then!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 