The mother of a 15-year-old boy who was murdered with a machete has condemned Sir Keir Starmer, David Lammy, the justice secretary, and Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, for failing to stop the “knife-crime epidemic”.
Jodie Taylor, the mother of Daejaun Campbell, wept as she spoke directly to her son’s killer at the Old Bailey on Monday. She later criticised politicians, saying: “The system keeps giving second chances to those who destroy lives and no choices to the lives they destroy.”
Campbell bled to death while pleading with a stranger to “call my mum” after being attacked with a “zombie-style” machete by a rival gang in Woolwich, southeast London.
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Taylor said in a statement read outside court: “How many more children must be buried before this country finally admits it has failed them? How many mothers must scream into their pillows because the streets have become open graves?”
She added: “To those who lead this country — Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan and David Lammy — you speak of reform while our children die … Every time another child dies, we get the same rehearsed apologies, the same reports, the same empty phrase, ‘lessons will be learnt’. But no lessons ever are. Because no one in power pays the price.
“Your words build nothing. Your silence buries everything … The system keeps giving second chances to those who destroy lives and no choices to the lives they destroy. The system hasn’t failed us — it has abandoned us.”
Daejaun had dropped out of school to work as a drugs’ courier when he was attacked in September last year. His friend Kelyan Bokassa, 14, was stabbed to death on a bus four months later in another gang attack.
Daejaun Campbell
METROPOLITAN POLICE/PA
The teenagers found guilty of Daejaun’s stabbing had previous convictions for carrying knives. Imri Doue, 18, who was convicted of murder, showed no emotion in the dock.
Taylor wept as she looked at Doue and said: “On that day you chose to destroy everything I loved and cherished. [Daejaun] told a family member that what he was doing was not worth it and he was bored and was going back to school on Monday. You stole his future … I keep asking when will this knife crime epidemic end. The criminal justice system does not seem to deter acts like yours.”
She added: “Daejaun was let down many times during his short life by the system in place that was meant to protect him.”
Doue had been declared a “victim of child criminal exploitation” at the time of the murder, following a referral under modern slavery laws, the court was told. He was “groomed by older boys” into a life of drugs and knives when his mother was out of the country in 2020.
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Doue was first convicted aged 13 of possessing a knife. In October 2023 he was convicted of affray and possessing a knife in relation to an attack in which another boy was stabbed. He was serving a rehabilitation order when he murdered Daejaun. Doue said at the trial he carried a knife almost every day for self-protection.
His accomplice Marko Balaz, 19, who filmed the aftermath of the stabbing, was convicted of manslaughter. Balaz advertised his drug dealing on social media. He was on bail for possessing crack cocaine, heroin and cannabis with intent to supply at the time of Daejaun’s murder.
Judge Sarah Munro echoed Taylor’s comments, telling the court: “His mother asks herself the same question we ask on a daily basis in this court: When will this knife crime epidemic end? Too many young lives have been lost already. Nothing I can do today will bring Daejaun back or, it seems, stop others from doing as you two did.”
She said Daejaun was “sucked into the world of lethal drug dealing, as so many young men in this city are”.
Doue was ordered to be jailed for a minimum of 21 years with a concurrent eight months for possessing a knife. Balaz, who has a significant learning disability, was jailed for nine years for manslaughter and a further two years consecutively for drug dealing.