5th August, 2010
It cost £16million and took six years to bring the killers of Damilola Taylor to justice.
But one of them will be freed next month – less than four years after being jailed for the schoolboyâ€
Damilolaâ€
He fears Preddie, 23, is the ‘same arrogantâ€
Damilola, ten, bled to death after being stabbed with a broken bottle on a council estate in Peckham, South-East London, in November
Ricky Preddie was 13 at the time of the attack. His brother, Danny, then just 12, is due to be released early next year.
Sentencing the brothers in October 2006, an Old Bailey judge said that neither had shown any remorse.
Yet, next month he is due to be released from high-security Swaleside Prison in Kent and is expected to settle in London.
Mr. Taylor, 62, said Preddie had not spent long enough in prison to be able to reform and could wreak new ‘havoc.â€
He also condemned the timing of the release, just two months before the tenth anniversary of his sonâ€
He said: ”Iâ€
”I hope they have reformed, but I know theyâ€
”Such a short time in prison is not enough after such a heinous crime.”
For Mr. Taylor and his wife, Gloria, who died in 2008, the years after Damilolaâ€
A first trial, involving four other youths, collapsed in 2002 after a bungled initial probe by the Met.
The brothers were finally prosecuted in 2006 after a fresh investigation led by Chief Supt. Nick Ephgrave, who instigated a review of the evidence.