Boyega Opens Up About Murdered Childhood Friend — SkimNews
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- John Boyega was one of the last people to see Damilola Taylor alive before the 10-year-old was stabbed with a broken bottle and left to die in a Peckham stairwell on 27 November 2000, and Boyega chose his sister Grace — not himself — as the primary family voice in the new BBC Two documentary because Damilola was more her direct friend
- The Damilola Taylor manslaughter case took six years and three Old Bailey trials at a total cost of £16m before brothers Danny and Ricky Preddie were each sentenced to eight years in youth custody in August 2006
- Boyega said Damilola's death shaped his acting career across Attack the Block, the Star Wars franchise, The Woman King and They Cloned Tyrone, and he watched daily edits of the 75-minute film, describing the experience as "an emotional hill to get over"
- Samson Boyega, John's father, sent him to Westminster City School — almost an hour from their home borough — after Damilola's killing, telling the boy's teacher the Peckham environment would "corrupt" his son; by the end of the decade, 188 teenagers had been murdered on London's streets
- Boyega, now 34, was eight when Damilola died and had previously believed death "only happened to old people"; he withdrew into his bedroom for months, telling his mother he didn't want to go out because "the hand of death is influencing kids to kill kids"
- Director Alex Thomas — who also made the Sky Original Bibaa and Nicole: Murder in the Park — made the documentary after several months of discussions with Boyega, though the final edit omits much of the backstory about the Peckham bullying ecosystem, a gap flagged by a Bafta Q&A audience member
Why it matters: Boyega's public re-engagement with a case that consumed six years and £16m in trials puts a celebrity spotlight back on child-on-child violence in London; the documentary also makes a deliberate choice to leave out the convicted brothers' backstories, a framing decision that drew direct questioning at its Bafta screening.
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