UK News 29-11-2000 Ten-Year-Old Stabbed To Death who: 10-year-old Damilola Taylor what: Stabbed to death in the street yards from home where: PECKHAM - SE15 when: Yesterday snippet: "Three young bullies were being hunted last night after knifing to death an innocent boy of 10," reports The Mirror today. "The youths - aged between 11 and 15 and wearing dark, hooded tops - were seen running from the scene as Damilola Taylor lay dying from a fatal stab in his leg which severed a main artery." Nigerian-born Damilola, who had lived in England for just three months, was attacked as he walked home from an after-school computer class at Oliver Goldsmith Primary School on the North Peckham Estate in South-East London. He was found by passers-by on a urine-stained stairway between the first and second floors of a "bleak council block, less than five minutes walk from home," says The Guardian. Paramedics tried to save him but he was pronounced dead on arrival at King`s College Hospital. "He may not have understood why he was being bullied at school," writes Nick Hopkins, crime correspondent, "or why some other children taunted him about being `gay` - the word meant nothing to him." "His femoral artery was slashed," says one police officer quoted in The Guardian. "It`s like the jugular vein. "Blood would have come out like a fountain. He didn`t really stand a chance." "Murder squad detectives are still considering that bullying or mugging may have led to the stabbing," says The Times, "and are checking to see how much cash the boy was carrying." [... more]

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