The death of the City solicitor Tom ap Rhys Pryce, stabbed for his mobile
phone and travelcard as he returned home one night last winter clutching his
wedding plans, struck terror into urban professionals.
At the time his killers were portrayed as feral youths who grew up without the
guiding influence of their fathers. It triggered a debate about the role of
fathers in the lives of urban boys. David Cameron, the Conservative leader,
wrote of his hope that “the men who left those boys’ mothers to bring them
up alone are reflecting on their own responsibility”.
But The Times has discovered that Delano Brown and Donnel Carty had
strong father figures whose attempts to play a formative role in their
up-bringing were rejected.
Delano Brown’s father, Wayne, is a builder and developer who owns a string of
properties in London and Florida and wanted his son to go to work with him
in the United States.
The rift between Gerald Carty and his son occurred, ironically, because Donnel
regarded his father as too much of a disciplinarian.
The Times found Wayne Brown at a detached house in Kissimmee, a
lakeside resort bordering Orlando, in a rustic road where wild deer skipped
along as horses grazed in a neighbour’s paddock. It is one of several
properties Mr Brown owns in Florida. He drives a $92,000 (£48,000) black
Range Rover with the personalised number plate WAB-1, representing his
initials Wayne Anthony Brown. Parked in the driveway was his $20,000 pickup
truck. This lifestyle could have been Delano’s, but the youth could not be
bothered to renew his passport.
Mr Brown bought this four-bedroom house with one-acre garden and 10ft metal
security gates for $670,000 (£343,500) last September as, back home in
England, his son awaited trial for murder. Asked if he was Delano’s father,
he gave a resigned “yes” but found it too distressing to speak further.
However, in an e-mail, he confirmed: “Delano worked for me during the daytime
whilst I was away in Florida. My managers in London would provide him with
plenty of painting and maintenance work on my properties but you are right:
I could not keep a good eye on him during the evenings. That was for his
mother to do.”
The family history was recounted by Mr Brown’s long-time accountant Lakhan
Samuels. Wayne, too, he recalled, was once a teenage tearaway who fell in
with the wrong crowd and was sent to borstal for an attempted theft.
Wayne’s uncle, a builder, took him in hand by teaching him the trade. The
young man rose from being a carpenter to a property developer with addresses
in the Wembley Park, Harlesden and Cricklewood areas of northwest London.
At a young age, Wayne fathered a child with a much older woman. Later, when
Wayne was 23, Delano was born to Maureen Leo, a cook for the Metropolitan
Police.
Wayne married Jacqueline Williamson two years later. Delano was brought up at
home by his father and stepmother along with the three children from their
marriage. His father paid for private tuition to boost his schooling.
Delano achieved five GCSEs and began a sports science course at college.
When Wayne went to Florida to expand the property business, his marriage broke
down. Wayne asked Delano’s mother to look after the boy until he could take
him to the States. Mr Samuels said: “He was hoping for Delano to come to
America with him because he was hoping that he would train Delano to be a
builder, as he is.”
But Delano’s passport had expired and the boy was spending ever more time with
his childhood church companion, Donnel Carty. The streets were beckoning.
Donnel’s father, known as Geoffrey, had taken responsibility for the child,
according to an independent professional who worked with the boy. Donnel’s
mother, Barbara Smith, was a community care worker.
“There was a custody [residency] hearing and his father wanted him and he
chose to go with his father,” the source said. “His dad just wanted him to
keep out of trouble. He didn’t want him roaming the streets. He didn’t want
him selling drugs. Donnel left his father’s house because his father was too
strict.” Donnel, known in the family as Marcus, chose to move in with his
grandparents, a devoutly religious and respectable Caribbean couple living
in a pleasant terrace in Kensal Rise, northwest London.
They may have found the raising of this generation of young urban males a
handful. An older cousin in the same house, Lloywen Carty, 26, was a member
of a gang which shot dead a man during the Notting Hill Carnival of 2004.
Lebert Carty, a bath enameller by trade, now the grandfather of two
convicted murderers, declined to be interviewed by The Times, saying
sadly: “I only talk to God. God knows.”
The Rev Dr Issachar Lewinson, pastor of the Willesden New Testament Church of
God, where both families worshipped, said: “They are respectable people to
whom the community looks.”
Tunde Banjoko, chief executive of LEAP, a voluntary organisation that sought
to help Donnel find employment, said: “His father was in his life and did
the best he could.”
Asked why the boys might have rejected loving, caring families for the
streets, he said: “There is a glorification of violence and gang culture. It
can become very easy to be seduced by the money that can be made selling
drugs or robbing people. The youth culture seems to find that acceptable.
Finding a way to demystify it or take away the sense of ‘cool’ is difficult.”
The killing of the London solicitor provoked a national debate about youth
crime.
In a searing tribute, Mr ap Rhys Price’s fiancée, Adele Eastman, 32, said: “I
feel as though Carty and Brown have ripped out my heart with their bare
hands and torn it, very slowly, into pieces.” The youths, aged 18 and 17
respectively when they killed, were jailed for life.
The bereaved family created the Tom ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust to enable
individuals who could not otherwise afford it to achieve their potential
through appropriate education.
For information about the Tom ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust, visit www.tomaprhyspryce.com
