When love is not enough: the mothers left grieving by our knife crime crisis

The number of teenage boys being killed on our streets has more than doubled in a decade. Francisco Garcia spoke to some of the bereaved parents trying to make sense of it all

- Francisco Garcia

There is no lack of grieving mothers in Woolwich. Jodian Taylor is among them.

On the afternoon of 22 September last year her 15-year-old son was murdered in south-east London. Daejaun Campbell was walking on Eglinton Road when he was spotted by three teenagers.

It is still not clear precisely why Daejaun was attacked, though police believe he was "g-checked" - slang for being confronted as a suspected rival gang member - before being chased by two of the teenagers, while a third stood close by.

Eyewitnesses saw Daejaun try to flee before his assailants caught up with him. He was struck with a machete after a brief struggle.

According to eyewitnesses, he shouted: "I'm 15, don't let me die." Daejaun had been carrying his own knife, which he had thrown at his attackers. He was also found in possession of drugs and cash. At the end of last month, two of the teenagers, both of whom had several prior convictions for carrying knives, were convicted of manslaughter and murder respectively, while the third was acquitted of his murder.

Taylor had always been a highly active presence in her son's life, and in his two younger brothers.

Daejaun's issues had started in secondary school, Woolwich Polytechnic for Boys. It was painful, she says, to watch her well-mannered, open-hearted son become sullen and withdrawn, and increasingly lost to her.

"When something like this happens, the focus is always on the victim. As if they deserve it somehow. I don't understand how that thinking comes about," she says. Many of the specifics still remain unclear, but Daejaun was likely to have been groomed into criminal activity by older local gang members, who used him to carry and supply drugs. Taylor says she had been a present, dedicated parent.