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by Luke Traynor and Saeed Mohamed, Liverpool Echo
FRIENDS and family today paid tribute to the Somalian student killed by an armed gang in a Liverpool park.
Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim, 17, was battered to death in Croxteth Drive, Sefton Park, on Monday night.
Today the ECHO can exclusively reveal how the teenager fled his native Somalia to come to the city nine months ago.
His devastated family said Ahmed had recently been reunited with mum Asiya who left war-torn Mogadishu two years earlier.
Ahmed remained behind in the troubled Somalian capital before escaping the East African country.
He arrived in Liverpool last summer to join his huge family of four sisters and eight brothers.
Relatives
said Ahmed was innocently caught up in a simmering feud in the city’s
close-knit Somalian community in Toxteth and Granby.
Cousin Yousaf Mohamed, 32, described him as “a boy who loved everybody and who had a dream”.
He
told the ECHO: “Ahmed wanted to make something of himself and wanted to
work in computer science. He was one of those people who made friends
just like that.
“He had become separated from his mother in Somalia.
“But when the two met up again in Liverpool they were so happy as they had thought they would never see each other again.
“Ahmed was an innocent boy who didn’t know what was going on. He is from a well-known family.
“He loved playing football and basketball. We are so sad about this.
“When
they were about to attack him, he kept begging these evils and telling
them that life was not about fighting, but they didn’t listen.”
A
female relative called Fatima said: “This boy has never hurt a living
soul in his life. Why is it always the good people who are taken away?”
Ahmed
was studying at Liverpool Community Centre in Duke Street and worked
part-time at medical nutrition firm SHS International, at Wavertree
Technology Park, in the bakery section of the company.
A work colleague said: “Ibrahim was quiet and shy. He would not say a lot. I can’t believe what happened to him.”
Grieving relatives and friends visited the family home in Toxteth yesterday to pay their respects.
A
number of cars were taken away by police for forensic examination
including a vehicle smashed up outside Ahmed’s home on Sunday evening –
a day before the murder.
The three men arrested on Tuesday night fled Liverpool and were picked up by police in Birmingham.
A huge area of Sefton Park today remained cordoned off as forensic officers continued to comb the area.
Floral tributes were left at the scene pinned to trees with messages in Somalian saying “Ahmed, may he drink from heaven. Amen”.
Six people, aged 19, 20, 21, 22, 22 and 23, today remained in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of murder.
Ahmed
died of severe head injuries hours after the attack, in a Liverpool
hospital. The post mortem revealed the cause of death as blunt force
trauma.
A second 17-year-old boy, named locally as Abdulahi
and said to be Ahmed’s cousin, had his fingers chopped off – possibly
with a machete.
Area commander for Liverpool south Supt Steve Ashley said: “We have been talking to community leaders to provide reassurance.
“I would say that this is not a gang-related incident in that there are two well-established gangs in these areas.
“This was a one-off incident and we are speaking to people in the community to prevent any sort of retaliation.”
An
incident room was set up by police. Anyone with information should call
0151-777 5376 or the anonymous Crimestoppers hotline on 0800 555 111.
[email protected]
SOURCE: Liverpool Echo, March 12, 2008