Hiiraan Online

Times Online
By Charlotte Gill
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Michael Dosunmu died after being shot in his bedroom in Peckham

Devout Christian Michael Dosunmu, 15, was hit three times in the back when two assassins walked in and opened fire as he lay under the duvet.

Abdi Omar Noor, 22, and Mohammed Sannoh, 19, had wanted to murder his 26-year-old brother Hakeem in revenge for the murder of a friend just days earlier.

Michael, who dreamed of being an architect or church minister, died almost instantly when one of the bullets passed through his heart.

His older sister Shakira, who heard the gunfire from her bedroom, came face to face with one of the killers as they fled before she found her brother in his blood-soaked bed.

The youngsters were the only two in at the family home in Peckham, South London, when the masked gunmen broke in through the front door at around 12.45am on February 6 last year.

Their mother, also called Shakira, was visiting relatives in her native Nigeria and their father Rasak, a senior psychiatric nurse, was in hospital after suffering a fall.

Hakeem, a former Sunday School teacher, had not been home for several days and was at a club where he was trying to sell drugs when his church-going brother was murdered.

Hakeem, who was nicknamed 'Soldier' after serving in Iraq and Bosnia, fell into crime in 2006 after struggling to find a job when he left the Army.

He had been held in high regard by officers but he was court-martialled over an assault following what he claimed was a racial incident.

Hakeem started mixing with some of south London's most notorious street gangs and dealt large quantities of cocaine from the bedroom he shared with Michael under the noses of his 'good, hardworking and very respectable' parents.

He became a wanted man early last year after a bitter feud in his gang over the proceeds of a robbery spree.

The group grabbed more than £45,000 in a series of stings on security guards heading in and out of banks.

Hakeem was accused of holding the missing money and Crighton's friend Sannoh decided to get revenge, enlisting the help of drug dealer Noor.

After the murder Noor fled to Ipswich and drunkenly confessed to a friend, laughing when he saw a report of the killing on news the day after the shooting.

Sannoh later told police: 'This boy's brother killed my friend. I don't care about the murder. I don't care what happened to that boy.'

Somalian Noor, of Camberwell, and Sannoh, from Peckham and originally from Sierra Leone, showed no emotion as they were unanimously convicted of murder by a jury at the Old Bailey yesterday.

Mr Dosunmu punched the air and shouted 'yes' as the verdicts were announced while his wife wept silently.

The pair will be sentenced tomorrow.

Standing with his wife outside court, Mr Dosunmu said Michael's murder had been 'like stabbing us in the heart'.

He said: 'Michael was a lovely boy. He never bothered us and was always comfortable with whatever we gave him.

'He was hard working and did his homework after school. He was level-headed and the type of boy every parent would want to have.

'He always came home with good grades and was very popular among his friends. He died with unfulfilled dreams.'

 
The two men used a Mac-10 sub-machine like this one to carry out the shooting. The murder weapon has never been recovered

He described his son's killers as 'very, very callous and inhumane'.

But his wife, also a psychiatric nurse, said she forgave Michael's murderers, adding: 'Personally I know what they did was very bad. I don't have any grudges. I have forgiven them from the bottom of my heart and one day they will come to their senses.''

Earlier this year Hakeem was jailed for two years for his role in the cash in transit robberies.

He admitted his involvement and named his co-conspirators in a 'sea change in attitude' following his brother's death and also gave key prosecution evidence to help jail Madden for life.

Mr Dosunmu said: 'Presently, he is feeling guilty that he brought all this on us. But this is not the way we brought him up.

'He is our son, we love him. We cannot discard him. He made a mistake in life.'

Detective Superintendent Gary Richardson, head of the Met's Trident team which ran the inquiry, praised the witnesses who came forward to help convict Sannoh and Noor, several of whom gave evidence behind screens and had their voices distorted to protect their identities.

He called for more witnesses to put their faith in the police and courts to help officers seal convictions on unsolved murder cases.

 It should have been me, weeps drug-dealing brother

The former drug dealer brother of Michael Dosunmu told the court: 'It should have been me.'

Shocked by the murder of his younger brother, Hakeem Dosunmu has renounced crime and wept in the dock as he told the court that he has to live with the fact that his brother's killers got the wrong man.

Once a Sunday School teacher, Hakeem's life descended into drug dealing and gangsterism before he found redemption after his brother's death.

He went downhill soon after returning from five years in the Army, serving in Basra with 32 Engineers during the invasion of Iraq and later in Bosnia.

Although well-regarded by officers, he was court-martialled over an assault.

Returning to civilian life in London, he struggled to hold down a job, fell in with the security van robbery gang and dealt in cocaine and ecstasy.

But after the killing he turned his back on his criminal friends, confessed to his crimes and gave evidence against the men who murdered his brother.

Dosunmu, 26, also helped secure the conviction of former friend Orando Madden for the murder of Javarie Crighton, which prompted the gun attack on his home.

At the Old Bailey, a judge reduced Dosunmu's possible five-year term for his part in robberies to two years after hearing how he blamed himself for his brother's death, pleaded guilty and helped the police.

Source: Times Online, June 17, 2008