Two British teenagers have been sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death on a London bus in broad daylight. The attackers, who cannot be named due to their age, pleaded guilty to murder in May and were sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 15 years and 110 days in detention.
The victim, Kelyan Bokassa, was stabbed 27 times with machetes on the bus in the Woolwich area of southeast London on January 7. His mother, Marie Bokassa, told the press that her son had been groomed by local gangs and exposed to drugs. She addressed the court, asking, “How can children behave like this? What have the children been exposed to, to show such behavior as this?”
The attack has reignited concern around youth gang violence and the ongoing problem of knife crime in the UK. According to the Metropolitan Police, knife crime is up by nearly 80 percent since 2015. Last year, 10 teenagers were fatally stabbed in London alone, after 18 were killed in 2023.
Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Lee, whose team led the investigation, said the “harsh reality in London is that violence disproportionately affects young Black men and boys”. She added that the fact that so many teenagers like Kelyan die should be at the forefront of the minds of every politician, policymaker, and everyone who wants better for children growing up in London.
Judge Mark Lucraft said one of the perpetrators was a “victim of child criminal exploitation” by gangs, adding that he had faced “a history of trauma”. The second boy was also exploited by gangs from the age of 12 and experienced “undiagnosed developmental needs”. Lucraft said it was “sadly an all too frequent senseless loss of yet another young life to the horrors of knife crime”, which “no sentence of a court can ever truly reflect”.
The judge’s comments highlight the complex issues surrounding knife crime and the need for a comprehensive approach to address the root causes of violence. As the UK continues to grapple with the problem of knife crime, it is clear that more needs to be done to support vulnerable young people and prevent tragedies like the one that befell Kelyan Bokassa.