Three men have been jailed for life for ambushing a “football mad” teenager, subjecting him to a “brutal” knife attack and leaving him for dead in a park.
Daniel Matos, 24, Keith Preddie, 34, and Joshua Cowley, 29, were found guilty of the murder 19-year-old Tyler Donnelly in Feltham, west London, on January 24 2024.
On Thursday, they were all jailed for life with Matos handed a minimum term of 27 years and six months; Preddie given at least 27 years and Cowley 25 years.
Sentencing at the Old Bailey, Judge Mark Dennis KC told them: “This was a brutal and cowardly attack, ambushing your victim who was outnumbered and had no opportunity to try and defend himself against such violence.”
He noted that Matos had engaged in three acts of violence in 10 months and had been wearing an ankle tag at the time of the killing after being given a suspended sentence for drug dealing.
The court heard how the defendants were caught after Matos’s GPS tag tracked them cycling to the scene of the attack in Hanworth Park, armed with two knives.
Mr Donnelly had also cycled there in his role as a runner for a local drug-dealing business operated from a phone number called the “John line”.
Instead of meeting customers, he was fatally stabbed in the neck and left to die in thick grass near his bicycle where he was found the next day.
He was still carrying nearly 30 packages of heroin and crack cocaine and £300 in cash.
The “sustained and targeted” attack on Mr Donnelly took five minutes and was not caught on camera or witnessed by anyone, jurors were told.
Afterwards, the defendants rode out of the park, with Matos changing his clothes at a friend’s address and the other two defendants going to Cowley’s home.
As well as being linked to the scene of the crime by GPS, Matos’s DNA was identified on an unlit cigarette beside the body and he had the victim’s blood on the sleeve of his hoodie.
Matos, of Hounslow, Preddie, of Feltham, and Cowley, of Hounslow, had denied involvement in Mr Donnelly’s death and were convicted of murder after a retrial.
In a victim impact statement, Mr Donnelly’s grandmother Shelley Packman described him as a “football mad” Tottenham Hotspur fan who was cheeky, funny, kind hearted and loved animals, particularly his dog Archie.
She told the court: “Tyler was only 75 days into his 19th year when he was taken from us in the most cruel and horrific way.
“He should have walked through the door. Instead, he was left in a field in the dark on his own.”
She described the difficulty of sitting through two trials and hearing the defendants laughing in court, saying they showed “no remorse and no humanity”.
