Lucy Bannerman
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Five teenagers who chased a schoolboy along a street chanting “catch him, kill him” and threatening him with bats, knives and a snarling pitbull terrier, are facing jail terms for their part in his murder.
Kodjo Yenga, 16, a gifted A-level student, died in his girlfriend’s arms, after being stabbed through the heart in March last year.
Two boys, aged 14 and 17, were convicted of his murder at the Old Bailey yesterday. They had already pleaded guilty to violent disorder.
Three others were cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter and violent disorder.
After hearing the jury’s verdict, the 14-year-old shouted: “No f***ing way. F***ing murder, I can’t do. F*** that man. F*** that.” He struggled with security staff before being led from the dock.
When the 17-year-old was convicted, his mother fled the court screaming: “No, please. That’s not right.” She later collapsed and fainted outside the courtroom and was treated by a nurse.
As the verdicts were announced, some jurors wept.
Kodjo was out with his 15-year-old girlfriend in Hammersmith Broadway shopping centre on March 14 last year, when he was approached by a 16-year-old who said: “I hear you want to fight me.”
Despite his girlfriend’s attempts to restrain him, Kodjo agreed and followed the boy to Adie Road, a residential side street off Hammersmith Grove.
There, at least nine more members of the street gang known as MDP, or Murder Dem Pussies, were waiting for him. At least one was carrying a knife. The group also had a pitbull terrier on a lead.
Kodjo, also known as Kizzle, told one of them: “Do you think you are a big boy because you’ve got a knife to me?” A 16-year-old replied: “I don’t care. I want you to respect me.”
His girlfriend was then grabbed round the neck and was warned she would be “shanked” (stabbed) if she tried to intervene.
She looked on helpless as the mob sprinted after Kodjo. She screamed: “Please don’t stab him, please don’t stab him” and watched in horror as he was attacked. “I could see a lot of hand movements,” she told police in a recorded interview which was shown to the jury. “I ran straight up to Kizzle. He was holding his heart. I turned him over. I put his head on my lap, I’m screaming and crying and I’m saying, ‘Please don’t die, please don’t die’.
“Blood was coming out of his mouth. I rocked him. I placed my hand on his heart. He’s moaning, making noises. I didn’t know he was stabbed in the heart at the time.
“I was like, ‘Kizzle, can you hear me?’ He said, ‘Yes’.”
A motorist and two plainclothes police officers tried to give him first aid before he was taken to New Charing Cross Hospital where he died later.
Angela Quinn, a teacher, saw the MDP members “shouting and excited, and looking proud” as they fled. Other witnesses said the gang walked away “laughing and smiling” as their victim lay bleeding in the road.
Kodjo, a pupil at St Charles Catholic Sixth Form College, North Kensing-ton, had gaining 10 GCSEs and was hoping to sit A levels in business, computer studies and French before going to university.
Only four days earlier, the schoolboy had appeared on a news special programme on MTV news, talking about the threat of knife crime.
His murder is believed to have been an “initiation” for the MDP gang, which posts videos glamorising street violence on YouTube and is known for breeding fighting dogs.
He was the seventh of 27 teenagers to be murdered on the streets of London in 2007.
The five teenagers, from the Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush areas of West London, denied murder.
A sixth boy, aged 15, was cleared of murder during the two-month trial on the judge’s direction and was also cleared of violent disorder by the jury.
Judge Anthony Morris, QC, said he would sentence the five boys found guilty yesterday on May 9.
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