Help me, help me, pleaded boy as he clung to pole on balcony

The 16-year-old was trying to flee a knifewielding gang by climbing down the outside of the council block when he fell from a seventh-floor balcony in Hackney.

The witness, who did not give her name, said that as she dialled 999 she heard a scream and saw him fall.

"I was looking for my keys and then all of a sudden I heard: 'Help me, help me please.' I turned around and I saw the boy who died hanging on to a pole. He wasn't dangling - his feet were resting on the balcony

"He looked me in the eye and said 'Call the police.'"

She said another youth had called out "Come here, man" as Ahmed pleaded with her. "I think he wanted to hurt him and I could tell the boy was terrified. I didn't see any weapons on the one who was threatening him but I was too scared to look at him."

Other witnesses said the gang caught up with Ahmed as he clung to the side of the building and hit his hands so hard he lost his grip and fell to the ground.

He bled to death from his injuries outside the flats in Paragon Road on Wednesday, a day before he was due to pick up his GCSE exam results.

Friends of Ahmed said today he had been caught in a drugs turf war but was not the intended target. They said he was being chased by a gang of violent hoodies because some of the group he was with were dealing drugs in the gang's territory.

Three other youths - allegedly crack cocaine dealers - were the intended target of the attack, a friend said. The 20-year-old, who did not want to be named for fear of retribution, said the group Ahmed was with had been attacked by five people in masks and balaclavas. They were able to run into the block of flats, less than a mile from Ahmed's home, because a security entry system was broken. But the gang cornered Ahmed as he tried to escape.

Another friend said: "They went to hide in the lift but Ahmed got separated. They were on the 14th floor and came down.

"After they came out, they were shouting to him, 'They are in the building, come down, come down.' These other guys then knew he was in there. Two ran all the way up. One of the boys actually saw it. He is really scared.

"Ahmed and his brother sold weed, the others sell harder drugs. That was a note to them to come off the streets or we will get you one by one," said the friend. "Hackney is crack city, there are syringes everywhere. These guys saw they were making money.

"It is a drug war. A big guy who they get their stuff off had been warned a few weeks ago to stop doing it, but they didn't. These guys didn't want Ahmed but the others."

Members of Ahmed's family said the teenager - who passed nine of his GCSEs at Hackney Free and Parochial School - had recently started hanging around with new friends and leaving the house more.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "We can't speculate on any of these theories at this point." Asked about the broken entry system at the flats, Hackney council said the block was run by a housing association that would not comment during the police investigation.