“I remember coming back from playing football that evening – people were out on the streets crying and there were police everywhere,” says Mustapha Carayol. “I asked my mum what had happened and she told me a 10-year-old boy had been stabbed. The whole community was shut down for the next few weeks. No kids were allowed to play out any more and the parks were empty because all the parents were obviously worried about their children’s safety. It hit the community hard.”
Next week marks the 16th anniversary of Damilola Taylor’s death on the notorious North Peckham estate. On Friday night,his father Richard will deliver the first in a series of Damilola Taylor Memorial Lectures on the issue of violent youth crime that still plagues the streets of south-east London. A BBC dramatisation of Damilola’s story was televised this month and provoked an outpouring of tributes from the local community and beyond on social media, including a heartfelt tweet from Carayol, who is a winger with Nottingham Forest.
“Because of Damilola Taylor Centre I’m doing what I love today! And for that I’m forever grateful. R.I.P Damilola #DamilolaOurLovedBoy,” he wrote.
Carayol, 28, is one of three current players in the Football League to have come through the centre – renamed on the first anniversary of Damilola’s death, having previously been known as Wickham Park, and now run by Southwark council. Under a scheme called Mad About Football which he helped set up, Dominic Welch has also coached Preston North End’s Daniel Johnson and the Oldham Athletic defender Charles Dunne and still helps to run a junior club, Southwark Allstars.
“I used to go there as a kid and play in five-a-side tournaments,” Welch says. “Just because of the way I was on the team with the younger guys I started working as a coach at 16 and I’ve been there ever since.”
It was only a year later that Welch met Damilola, who had arrived from Nigeria with his mother Gloria and siblings Tunde and Gbemi. A keen Manchester United supporter, the 10-year-old became a regular at the centre that would one day bear his name. “In that summer when he first came over he was there every day. He was always asking: ‘Uncle Dom, can we go and play football?’ and was such a lovely kid.”
The day after the killing, Carayol was one of several local children to be questioned by police. He was born in the Gambia but moved to England aged six and attended the same primary school as Danny and Rickie Preddie, brothers who would espend eight years in youth custody for the manslaughter of Damilola.
“We all used to hang around in the area and the North Peckham estate was known for gang culture,” he says. “The police found it hard to monitor because it was spread across so many floors and people they were chasing would always get away. It was like a maze – we knew every little alley or shortcut.
“They knocked on the door of every house in a certain radius to speak to us. That was the end of my freedom. From then on, I had to come straight back from football and not hang about with my friends. It was such a senseless killing of a boy who had come here for a better life. What could they have been trying to rob from a 10-year-old? But that’s what Peckham was like in those days.
“Things changed after that and everyone tried to be more positive and take an active role in the community,” Carayol adds. “Richard Taylor’s legacy made it better for us growing up because they refurbished the centre and started putting on new events for everyone to go to. It brought the community together. I learned how to do everything there and not just football. A lot of the people who helped were volunteers who were around the same age as us that we knew from around the estate. Otherwise who knows, I could have ended getting into trouble as well. It was about educating us to try to stay away from situations that could easily spiral out of control.”
A year after Damilola’s death, Tony Blair and his wife Cherie visited the North Peckham estate to open the refurbished youth centre less than 100 yards from the stairwell where his body had been found. Still only a teenager himself, Welch pleaded with Blair to ensure there was no repeat of the events of that November night in 2000. “The refurbishment of this centre is good news for Peckham’s young people but I’ll be honest, it’s not nearly enough,” he implored.
The estate was flattened in 2004 and replaced by a £300m development of flats and houses. Welch is justifiably proud of the achievements of Carayol, Johnson and Dunne but he warned there is still plenty work to be done in the area. “One of the things I called for was more provisions for young people – that was the main message,” he says. “They kind of did but 16 years down the line we’re going back to the same thing. As the years have gone on there’s been a few cuts in staff and budgets so things have slightly changed. There’s still a lack of opportunities for young people due to some of the cuts. I’m hoping it may change and things will pick up again.”
A new 3G pitch was installed at the centre in 2014 and it has recently received a new grant from Children in Need that will go towards supporting volunteers and buying new equipment. Carayol, who began his professional career at MK Dons and had spells at Bristol Rovers and Middlesbrough before joining Forest in August, remains a regular visitor.
“I still spend a lot of time there – it’s just what I know,” he says. “I’ve lived in some expensive houses in really nice areas but I will always prefer going home to my mum’s house and kicking my little brother out of my old room. When I’m home for the summer I still meet up with my old friends and go down to the Damilola Taylor Centre on Fridays for a kickabout so there’s no way we can forget his name. That’s his legacy.”
