Last year's shooting of 15-year-old Billy Cox on Valentine's Day was particularly gruesome. Although Billy was still only a teenager, the killer cold-bloodedly aimed the gun at his chest as he stood on his doorstep on Fenwick Estate in London's Clapham North. Billy's younger sister, Elizabeth, heard the gunshot as she was arriving home. She tried in vain to save her brother's life.
Worse still, the event was not a one-off: Billy's was the third teenage gang killing in the capital within two weeks. James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, had been shot at Streatham Ice Arena on 3 February, and Michael Dosunmu, 15, was shot in his own home in Peckham three days later. In total, gang violence claimed the lives of 27 young people in London last year, of which five were killed in Lambeth.
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