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TWO youths involved in the "honey-trap" murder of a teenager should have been arrested months earlier for a previous stabbing, it emerged today.
Don Carlos Ellis, 18, and 17-year-old Michael Akinfenwa acted as lookouts as Shakilus Townsend, 16, was lured to his death by his 15-year-old girlfriend Samantha Joseph.
An Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry has discovered the pair should have been held over a knife attack five months before.
Their street names, Rugrat and Spekta, were given to police in Croydon but officers failed to trace them and wrongly logged computer details.
Ellis, Akinfenwa and five others face life sentences after being found guilty of murder last week.
Shakilus was beaten with baseball bats and stabbed five times by a gang wearing masks and hoods in a quiet cul-de-sac in Thornton Heath last July.
She then agreed to help in his plan to kill Shakilus. CCTV cameras on a bus caught her and the 16-year-old travelling to the scene together, before he was set upon and stabbed in the chest five times.
The killers were chased away by neighbours who found Shakilus bleeding to death and crying out: "Mummy, mummy. I don't want to die." Joseph was seen fleeing from the scene.
All seven youths convicted of murder were members of a Croydon gang called Shine My Nine.
Reader views (7)
Why build the prisons in Africa and the caribbean? Hundreds of years benefiting from the slave trade and now you don't lke the by-product huh? Unfortunaately to every action there is a reaction, these thugs were created in ENGLAND not Africa or the caribbean
- Speaker of truth, London, 04/01/2011 15:34
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Build prisons in africa and the carribean and let the gangs/murderers face life imprisonment with hard labour every day
- Okeny, london, uk, 23/07/2009 00:24
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Im guessing they should receive a higher tariff than their fellow gang members, but they wont. They will all receive around 16 years each.
- Jen, london, 22/07/2009 23:24
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Worthless trash.
- Bobby Spiers, Luton, UK, 22/07/2009 23:24
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Is it a suprise? I mean, really?
If the Government/police/youth justice board werent so soft and gave these scumbags, proper prison sentences and there was no such thing as early release scheme then Nas osawe, Martin Dinnegan , Shakilus Townsend, Robert Knox, Jimmy Mizen, Shaquille Smith and many more would still be alive today. As their killers all had previos convictions,all of which dodged a prison sentence,or served less than half of the sentence imposed! Pathetic
- Jen, london, 22/07/2009 23:24
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No sympathy here, only for the innocent people these gangs terrorize, not other gang members. The media really needs to stop the "sympathy" headlines for these low life gang bangers as it is getting old and no one cares about this scum.
- Dirk Diggler, Soho, London, 22/07/2009 23:24
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Punish them, surely not. You'd be denying them their human rights. Your justice system is run by a bunch of spineless sissies
- Mike Murphy, Ireland, (formerly london), 22/07/2009 23:24
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