241 Pizza

Police might have arrested DonCarlos and Akinfenwa after being given their “street names”, but not full identities, by another teenager who had been stabbed in a gang feud a few months before Shakilus’s murder. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has begun an investigation.

Although Shakilus’s mother insisted that he had turned over a new leaf, he also had a history of violence. His profile on a social networking website showed him wearing a stab-proof vest and jabbing a blade into it next to the message: “I’m a sweet boy, slash your face up if you f*** around with me.”

At 13 he was convicted of common assault and the following year was found carrying an axe in the street. He also had convictions for robbery and carrying an axe and a knife.

In court McLean admitted stabbing Shakilus, insisting that it had been in self-defence and that he was aware of his victim’s reputation. After the stabbing, McLean and Joseph had wiped Shakilus’s account on Bebo, the social networking site, in order to delete any link between them.

As rumours spread of Joseph’s betrayal, Shakilus’s friends used such sites to condemn her. One comment read: “Remember u set up Shak. You bitch. And he luved yooooh. You iz f****d!”

Shakilus’s mother, Nicola Dyer, 34, of Deptford, southeast London, said that action needed to be stepped up to rid the streets of the gang-culture that claimed the life of the eldest of her five children.

“First and foremost, your children are your responsibility,” she said. “But we must not just consider ourselves as parents of our own children, but to all children. It takes not a mother and father to raise a child, but a whole village. This African proverb, which was once used by Hillary Clinton, is an indication of the responsibility we all have towards one another.”

Speaking of Joseph, she said: “Shakilus really cared about her and I can’t understand how she could have callously set him up and lured him to his death.”

Detective Inspector Barney Ratcliffe said that Joseph had made various phone calls before the fatal encounter, telling McLean where she and Shakilus were. “She was an integral part of what was going to happen — if she hadn’t been involved it wouldn’t have happened.”

The seven teenagers will be sentenced in September. Scotland Yard’s leading homicide detective said that the convictions were a clear sign that police were breaking down the “wall of silence” that frequently surrounded gang violence.

Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell said: “Just a few years ago this case would have been very difficult. The killers are getting long sentences and those carrying knives will be aware that families, friends and communities are fed up with the gang and knife culture and are getting together to stamp it out.”

Since April, 24 out of 26 people tried for murder in London have been convicted. In the first five months of this year nine young men under the age of 21 have died in stabbings, compared with 18 in the same period last year.

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