The sister of a teenage boy who was fatally stabbed in Coventry on Saturday night has said he was killed because of his postcode.
Jaydon Washington James, 16, was with friends just before midnight when they were attacked in Wood End, in the north of the city. Two of his friends sustained serious injuries and remain in hospital.
Writing on Facebook, Jayda James said of her brother: “He didn’t fight, he wasn’t part of a ‘gang’, he was friends with everyone and tried to keep the peace whenever he could. Jaydon was stabbed to death because of his postcode, because he was a Wood End boy. I can’t believe someone took my brother’s life simply because of the neighbourhood he lived in.”
She described Jaydon as “the sweetest, funniest, most kind-hearted boy” and thanked people for their messages of support.
She paid tribute to those who waited with Jaydon for help to arrive and who told her and her mother about what had happened. “All we want to do now is find out who took Jaydon’s life, so we can seek justice,” she wrote.
At a press conference on Monday, Ch Supt Mike O’Hara, of West Midlands police, said detectives were pursuing several lines of inquiry.
“Clearly the death of anyone is horrendous and tragic, but the death of a child just makes it even more emotional,” he said. “We’ve got a number of options which we are investigating. I’m not going to join in conjecture into whether it is gang-related or not.”
In 2015, Wood End was ranked the eighth most deprived area in England by Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI), in a report commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
