Remember Damilola... ‘the boy next door’?

On November 27, 2000, 10-year-old Damilola Taylor was on his way back home from Peckham Library, when he was stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle on a dank concrete stairwell.

He died in hospital from the wounds.

The death of the youngster, who had only been in Britain for three months after moving with his family from Nigeria, shocked the nation.

Damilola was rapidly elevated from crime victim to national martyr and a photograph of him warmly smiling and radiating innocence became a cultural touchstone as the issue of street crime and gang violence hit the front pages.

After a long and convoluted investigation, four teenagers were brought to trial at the Old Bailey in June 2001. However, the process turned out to be a fiasco, and the accused walked free.

Nevertheless, detectives doggedly continued looking for new leads, and eventually three new suspects appeared in court on charges of manslaughter in 2006.

One of them was eventually found not guilty, but the other two – brothers Daniel and Ricky Preddie, who were aged just 12 and 13 at the time of the crime – were convicted and sentenced to eight years in youth custody.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Damilola’s death, DJ and Capital Xtra presenter Yinka Bokinni has teamed up with emerging film director Ashley-Francis Roy to create this deeply personal, poignant and reflective documentary.

Not only is Yinka an influential voice across the UK hip-hop, grime and R&B scene, she a childhood friend of ‘Dami’, the naughty, cheeky, lively boy with whom she played with almost every day.

For the first time, she discusses the impact of the tragic event which the children from the area have never felt able to talk about.

She says: “I’ve never spoken about the murder of my childhood friend until now, I have lived my life with so many questions about what happened and why it happened in the place that I called home. To finally be telling the story feels both therapeutic and scary, but I am ready to share this side of the story. Hopefully everyone will get to know the real Damilola, as he lived, a bit better.”

In the aftermath of the crime, the ‘notorious’ North Peckham Estate, which had been seen as a hotbed of gangs, drugs and violence since the 1980s, was demolished and the families dispersed. However, Yinka remembers it differently as a warm, loving and happy community, rather than the crime-ridden “sink estate” that was somehow to blame for the tragic loss of a young life.

Yinka meets childhood friends as well as local kids who grew up to do amazing things: people like Top Boy star Ashley Walters; Cornelius Walker who told his own Damilola-inspired story about race and community in the Oscar-nominated film Black Sheep; and music producer Tinyman, who was the last person to see Damilola on the day he died.

Although it’s almost two full decades since Damilola’s tragic death, there are still plenty of issues associated with the case that are relevant today.

As Fozia Khan, Commissioning Editor for Channel 4 documentaries says: “Damilola Taylor died 20 years ago, but the questions Yinka asks and reflects on have never felt more timely.”

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