Four killers of 17-year-old Kelvin Chibueze sentenced to 93 years in prison

Four killers who stabbed 17-year-old Kelvin Chibueze to death following a mass brawl at an Ilford nightclub have been jailed for 93 years today.

Kelvin collapsed in a car park outside the Lidl supermarket off High Road, Ilford, after being repeatedly stabbed with a foot-long blade in August last year.

Dale Williams, 21, Lerone Boye, 26, Hugo Nwankwo, 18, and Roger Damali, 31, all members of the Barking-based Harts Lane street gang, chased him out of the Arteflex nightclub, near Ilford police station, brandishing Champagne and brandy bottles.

Today Williams, of Harts Lane, Barking; Boye, of Henley Road, Ilford, and Damali, of Macaulay Road, East Ham, were given life sentences at the Old Bailey to serve a minimum of 26, 28 and 23 years respectively.

Nwankwo, 18, of Park Avenue, East Ham, who was 16 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to 16 years in a young offenders’ institute. It is thought violence flared inside the nightclub on August 15 last year after derogatory comments were made about a girl, but Judge John Bevan QC said the full reason behind the attack will never be known.

“We are still none the wiser as to the cause, and whether of not it has to do with gang violence”, he said.

Kelvin, from Croydon, was affiliated to the notorious Dagenham Boys gang and went by the street name Boss Don Gramz.

One of the wounds he received had pierced his lung and he was taken to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel but was pronounced dead.

The judge criticised Kelvin’s friends who were with him that night for refusing to testify in court or help police investigate the murder.

He said: “Witness after witness with one solitary exception lacked the necessary courage to advance the truth”.

All four defendants denied murder and violent disorder and were convicted after a trial.