ROS WYNNE-JONES: ‘I noticed Damilola Taylor’s blood after homicide – as we speak I lastly noticed hope’

On Nov 27, 2025

Today marks 25 years since the horrific murder of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor and saw a beautiful memorial event led by his brother Tunde, and attended by London Mayor Sadiq Khan

16:59, 27 Nov 2025

At the memorial event to mark the 25 years anniversary of the murder of Damilola Taylor today, his smiling face shone out on every seat, on the front page of the programme. At the lectern stood Tunde Taylor, 10 years older than his little brother Dami. Instantly recognisable for his brother’s eyes and quick smile, and his mother’s gentleness.

For years, memorial events have been led by his parents Gloria and Richard. Then in 2008 Gloria passed away, his family always believed, from a broken heart. Last year, we lost the proud and charismatic Richard. So, for the first time, on the 25th anniversary, introducing the event fell poignantly to his eldest son.

“Today has always been a tough day for our family, and it’s harder today without my dad being present,” he said quietly. “But the legacy of Damilola lives on in building true hope, justice and opportunity for young people. 25 years later, we are not just remembering a tragedy, but we are building solutions.”

Tunde also has Gloria’s warmth, and today’s message was clear and hopeful. 25 years since Damilola’s passing, also marks 25 years of the extraordinary Damilola Taylor Trust, set up by his parents to make other children safe.

The streets were wet as we arrived at the memorial at the EY building in Southwark, a reminder that the night Damilola was murdered was a cold, torrentially wet November night on the North Peckham estate.

It was still cold and wet when I arrived at the scene, less than a 10-minute cycle from my home, less than five-minutes’ walk from his. Blood was still clearly visible on a dank stairwell cut off by blue and white police tape flapping in the hard wind.

It seemed incomprehensible that a 10-year-old boy had been stabbed coming home from computer club at the local library. A boy who wanted to be a doctor so he could help his severely disabled sister, the reason the family had come to the UK. A boy who loved Man Utd, and never walked when he could skip.

Later, his father Richard would tell me he always believed that Damilola’s personality was part of what attracted the attention of his killers. “He wasn’t hidden behind a hood, he was always skipping about,” Richard said. “He didn’t have his head down.”

Dami’s death became a crisis moment for the kind of Britain we thought we lived in. And his face was everywhere for months and years after his death.

Today, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, remembered, “the child who smiled at us from the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Kind, funny and full of hope. Hopeful for the day when he could cure his sister’s epilepsy. Hopeful his beloved team Man Utd would again win the treble. Hopeful of travelling far and wide to achieve his legacy.

“Damilola never got to do that. But his hope lives on. Richard and Gloria dreamed of a country where every child lived free from fear and could face the future with confidence.”

Police Minister Sarah Jones gave a deeply personal speech to those gathered. “As a Croydon MP I know too many mothers who have lost children,” she said. “My daughter did her GCSEs this summer. The night before her first GCSE a boy made the choice to go to a fight with a knife.

“We need to change things so a different choice is made… We need to make it that violence is not inevitable. Thank you for reminding me what love and hope can do.” Damilola’s murder brought national attention to a generation of failed and abandoned children living in the shadows. Even on that first day, I was drawn to a group of kids I had seen eyeing up my bike, despite the heavy police presence.

A 13-year-old girl, who I called Emma, told me she was carrying a four-inch knife in her shoulder bag. She shook with laughter when I asked how a young boy had come to be slashed with a broken bottle and left for dead. “It’s just funny,” she said. As I spoke to people on the estate, Emma followed me about. “I wouldn’t like to stab anyone because I’m afraid of blood,” she said. “But if anyone tries to trouble me, I’m going to defend myself. I don’t want to be like that, but I’ve had people saying they’re going to stab me up.”

Then she took me “to the only person who is helping us”, under the arches of a Camberwell railway bridge, a woman in a brightly eccentric turban who turned out to be Camilla Batmangheildh, the controversial charity leader exonerated only after her death. The Taylors’ gift has been to help generations of these children find safety and purpose in their lives, even while grieving their own loss.

Richard once told me what it felt like to lose a son. “It is like a rupture, a sword being driven into your heart,” he said. “Something has ruptured at the heart of your body. The sword is still there all these years later. It can never be taken out.”

At Gloria’s funeral, the angry weather felt like the day of Dami’s death, rain lashing the cemetery and lightning lighting the path of the pall-bearers. Richard blamed Damilola’s killers for his wife’s death. “She always bottled everything up,” he said.

Still, Richard never gave up. Just before he died, Damilola said in a poignant school essay: “I know it is my destiny to defend the world, which I hope to achieve during my lifetime.” But it was his family who have fulfilled his legacy.

The work done by the Damilola Taylor Trust has been seen in the life-enhancing Spirit of London Awards led by CEO Gary Trowsdale – and in 45 ‘Hope Hacks’ that have engaged thousands of young people all over the country. And today the DTT announced a new collaboration with Youth Build UK that will support 500 young people into work in construction.

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Today was a moment to remember Dami, but also Richard and Gloria – and others gone too soon, including Camilla and the extraordinary music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards who gave so much to the DTT. And it was a moment to mark the stuttering progress which has been made since Damilola’s death.

“In London we have seen the lowest level of under-25s homicides for more than two decades,” Sadiq Khan said. “But our work is far from done. “As long as there are boys or girls like Damilola being hurt or killed on our streets, and parents like Richard and Gloria, all of us must keep working for a country free of fear and full of hope. “Damilola wanted to change the world, and that is what we must do in his memory.”