I get this screaming, horrendous phone call from my daughter
just screaming that Imani had been shot.
It looks like an assassination. An execution.
This was the middle of the afternoon,
children were playing football, and they all fell to the floor.
That's right off the Richter scale.
You've got a killer on the loose that might strike again.
Many parents are thinking, could this be my child next?
Who would open fire next to a children's playground
in broad daylight?
When we talk about things like revenge,
then it becomes a spiral of violence.
It was kind of portrayed that this young Black boy had done it
and he's got shot.
Headlines which are so far from the facts it's unbelievable.
You have to harvest evidence as quickly as you can.
If you miss something
in the first few hours at a murder scene,
you're never gonna retrieve it again.
How can forensics catch the killer?
NARRATOR: In North London,
emergency services race to a children's play area
following reports of rapid gunfire.
Local residents heard gunshots,
had a look outside, and saw the prone body of a young man.
22-year-old Imani Allaway-Muir has been shot close to his home
and is in a critical condition.
Imani unfortunately was in quite a bad way,
by which time his mother had arrived at the scene.
All my grandsons were there, his brothers were there,
his dad was there, and watched them trying to save his life.
Really, really, erm, stressful.
Heart-breaking.
Really traumatic for the family.
It's really important to try and limit
who can see what's happening at that scene.
As Imani's mum, Keetha, and dad, Jason,
desperately watch paramedics try to save him,
police lock down the scene.
Shaken witnesses describe the terrifying moment
the gunman opened fire.
Bullets ricocheted around the playground,
and children was in there playing football,
and they all fell to the floor,
so a lot more children could have been hurt as well.
I hate to think what it would have been like
had it been the school holidays.
There would have been utter carnage.
Witnesses describe the shooter as looking angry
and holding a black gun.
Paramedics find Imani has been shot four times,
causing catastrophic injuries.
There was a huge amount of blood loss all over the scene.
He died about 30 minutes later.
He lost so much blood, he just couldn't be saved.
And all I could remember was screaming.
I asked her, "Is he alive?" And she said, "No, he's dead."
He was the gel to the family, to be honest.
Very family-orientated young man.
Imani grew up in the area, where he lived with mum, Keetha,
and his four younger sisters and brothers.
He adored his mum. Everything was his mum.
Mum first more than anything.
Yeah, he loved his mother.
When I did see my daughter,
it was just the pain and screams from her.
Nobody knew anything, cos it was like, "What's happened?"
You know, this was in the middle of the afternoon
in a children's playground.
With the motive not yet known,
police are concerned about what the gunman could do next.
You've got a killer on the loose that might strike again.
That's right off the Richter scale.
You have to harvest evidence as quickly as you can.
If you miss something in the first few hours at a murder scene,
you're never gonna retrieve it again.
We try and track where Imani was stood
and where he ended up collapsing,
and that can be done through blood pattern analysis.
He wasn't facing the shooter.
He appeared to have been shot whilst trying to get away.
This looks like a planned attack.
Why was this young man targeted?
A young man shot in broad daylight.
That's rare.
First thing that goes through your mind -
"Is it a crime that's gone wrong? Is it a gangland shooting?"
Er, "Is it a domestic?"
You've got to have a completely open mind.
It was just a shock, to be honest.
I didn't think about it being a grudge.
Everyone knew Imani from the area.
Everyone loved Imani. Everyone.
And everyone had a funny story to tell about Imani.
He liked to be in the park.
He'd meet his friends, play a bit of football.
To hang out.
In the park, CSIs trace the shooter's movements.
If we can find out where someone was stood,
that's really great for forensic opportunities,
because then we can almost try and recreate the scene.
Also then helps with any CCTV footage,
because potentially they might be able to work out
where they might have escaped to.
In an incident like this,
we would probably get a ballistic scientist
to be able to track
exactly where the shots might have been fired from.
You could potentially see where bullets have landed
and be able to determine a point of origin
as to where they've been fired.
We have a whole variety of kit that's available,
so we can use lasers for that, we can also use rods.
External scenes are more difficult,
because there's the potential for ricochet.
So when we're working back to look at trajectories,
it may not be a direct line.
It's a cul-de-sac, in essence.
There's a children's play area,
and just adjacent to that is a caged football pitch
with alleyways running both sides of it.
So it's quite a compact murder scene.
Ballistics determines the shooter's position
was the top of an alleyway
running between the playground and Bride Street.
It's right by Roman Way,
which one side of it is Pentonville Prison.
There's obviously CCTV from the prison walls,
and on the estate itself, there may be doorbell cameras.
So they're all good places to look for video footage
of what may have happened or even pick up some sound.
Because, as you know, gunshots are not quiet.
Officers go door to door and turn up an early lead.
A neighbour's video doorbell has captured audio
of the chilling moment the gunman opened fire.
GUNSHOTS
So, what you can hear there are 14 rounds
being fired off consecutively.
That would suggest it's either a semi or a fully automatic weapon.
Heart-breaking.
And even now, I can't really talk about Keetha,
because that's very painful, with the pain she's going through.
But that's what they've put us through.
You know?
That's an awful lot of firepower to use.
The perpetrator just kept his finger on the trigger, no shout for mercy.
It's just pure and utter execution.
There is no other way to describe it.
He wanted to make a statement
to demonstrate their power and their might.
Imani was just a 22-year-old young lad
going about his own business.
So why have they picked on him?
It was just a shock, to be honest. Everything was a shock.
NARRATOR: In North London, tributes build at the scene
of 22-year-old Imani Allaway-Muir's tragic murder.
Imani was my first-born grandchild.
We were very, very close.
He was born special.
Keetha went into premature labour at 34 weeks.
He was this little tiny baby, like, you could hold him here,
and then he just grew fatter and fatter.
By the time he was one, he was a tonker.
Then he was, like, six foot two and really skinny by the time of 22.
You know? Handsome young man.
He was cheeky. A joy, a big joy.
This is a bit of a conundrum.
It looks like an assassination, an execution,
cos that's what it is,
but there's no motive.
He was either running away or walking away from the attacker,
or actually the attacker was following him,
because all his injuries were on the back of his body.
The police found it really difficult
to be able to identify who the offenders were
because he had nobody that didn't like him.
There was nobody in his life that had a grudge against Imani.
In search of answers, detectives retrace Imani's final movements.
Imani was at my house on the Friday.
He used to stay over quite a lot.
I've got a special needs daughter, so Imani used to come to the house,
playing cards and playing games,
he used to really enjoy that interaction.
He used to play tricks on me all the time
and have me screaming and shouting at him.
Just fits of laughter.
His last words to me, "See you later, Nan," you know.
Shouted up the stairs.
From his grandma's, Imani travelled home,
stopping by the park to watch the football.
I don't think he was there two minutes before he was killed.
The next thing, I get this screaming, horrendous phone call
from my daughter.
This wasn't just a random attack on somebody.
It was a targeted attack. Why did they want to target him?
At the park, CSIs harvest the evidence.
The only traces left behind by the shooter
are multiple bullets and casings.
You would collect them using plastic tweezers,
because what you don't want is metal to metal markings.
And then they're put into poly pots
to stop any movement from happening in transit,
because we want to keep them as they were.
In a shooting crime scene,
there's often very little evidence at that scene.
There's shots that have been fired from a distance away,
so there's probably not much
potential trace evidence on your victim.
Knowing what sort of weapon might have been used
can be really important,
because if we can find the weapon,
we might be able to find the offender.
It looks like it's a 9x19mm,
and you can see the markings S and B,
and that will tell you the name of the manufacturer.
On cartridge cases, you may also be able to find fingerprints,
because obviously somebody has physically picked them up
and put them into the weapon.
You have to start thinking like how an offender would.
So, how are bullets loaded into a magazine and a gun?
Most of the time, the bullets are loaded in
by pushing the end of the bullet casing.
So the best area probably to swab for DNA
would be around this ridged area
and the actual end of the bullet casing.
These areas are not possible to get fingerprints from.
You might get fingerprints from the shaft here,
but again, it's quite a small surface.
On a bullet casing this size,
I would tend to go for DNA swabbing
and hope that the shooter or whoever loaded the magazine
is on the DNA database.
Testing reveals the shooter is forensically aware
and probably wore gloves.
But experts are able to identify the make and model of the firearm.
It's a 9mm Glock 19 pistol, commonly used by gangs.
We are seeing an increase in gun crime,
and we are seeing gang-related incidents occurring in inner cities,
and I think, unfortunately,
we are going to see more incidents like this in the future.
When you're thinking about particular groups
involved in criminality
that are trying to protect that territory,
they will use any means.
Extreme violence is something that they need to do
to demonstrate that nobody can't mess with them.
That's the message that they want to send.
The big thing for me is the signpost, the motive,
and once you know what the signpost is,
you're on your way to getting some...
..explanation for what's happened.
We'll be looking at the lifestyle of Imani.
Police cordon off Imani's home,
looking for any possible connection to the shooter.
They had to go through the whole house, you know.
Then they had to come to my house, cos he'd stayed at my house,
and they just would not let Keetha into the property at all
to get anything.
Keetha just ran out, like, with just a t-shirt and trousers,
and the police said we're not allowed into the house.
Obviously, they need to search things,
cos that's the protocol of what they do, apparently.
And then there was just...
She screamed outside there that all she wanted was her baby.
Police will do whatever they can
to be empathetic as possible in the circumstances,
and most SIOs...
..speak to the family
through the FLO, the family liaison officer.
You're treading a very fine line.
You wanna catch the perpetrators, but...
you have to respect the wishes of the family.
Police find nothing to lead them to Imani's killer.
The police investigated cos that's part of what their job is.
Because otherwise, if they don't do that,
when it comes to trial, the defence can say,
"The victim of this was a criminal."
I can say categorically, Imani wasn't a criminal at all.
He's certainly not a member of any gang.
Obviously, there's nothing to find, cos it's nothing to do with Imani.
Cos he was innocent amongst all this.
Imani was part of a close-knit family.
That was his favourite time, all the family being together.
So, we're quite a close family.
So, we do everything together, really.
He wanted us always to have a party.
He loved all the new babies that came into the family.
All the pictures, you always see Imani cradling a baby.
And then when he had his first little baby sister,
he was definitely the big brother,
and he would carry her everywhere and do everything with her.
He adored her.
Very, very protective.
Imani aspired to work as a mentor to children with additional needs,
volunteering twice a week at a local youth centre.
He was amazing with children. He's just had a soft side of him.
He had Asperger's and ADHD
and he was dyslexic,
so he did struggle when he was younger.
I've always been proud of Imani,
because he's had his obstacles, obviously, over the years,
with his trying to cope with his own disability.
But yeah, always proud of Mans.
In need of a forensic breakthrough,
CSIs examine the bullets and casings for unique markings.
I'm now going to look at the end with a magnifying glass.
DR HEWINS: The other things that you can find on cartridge cases
and potentially on bullets are tool marks.
You can also get some markings on the outside of the cartridge case
and striation marks on the bullet as well.
Now, striation marks have individual characteristics.
That means there's something really quite unique
about the markings on it.
We may be able then to relate it back to a specific firearm.
You're looking for any marks or damage or anything unusual
on the end this bullet casing.
So, you can see where the bullet's been fired.
You can also see that there's a little bit of damage
which may be replicated from the firing pin of the gun.
They can be uploaded onto the database, which...
In the UK we use IBIS, which would potentially allow us
to see if the perpetrator has used that weapon
in any other instance in the last ten or more years.
Using 3D microscopy,
investigators photograph the bullets and casings
and upload them to IBIS, to compare their unique marks
against other known firearm incidents,
but the system draws a blank.
Sometimes, it's just irretrievable.
So you end up almost with a ghost gun
that you can't ascertain where it's originated from.
SARAH THIRKELL: It can be really frustrating in an investigation
if you have a really important piece of evidence
and it's not matched on the database.
You've got a killer on the loose that might strike again,
and you've got no way of identifying who that person is.
A Section 60 order is put in place
across the entirety of Islington and Camden,
granting police additional stop and search powers.
Police are concerned
that there might be repercussions in the area
or there might be a further targeted attack.
Having a Section 60 will help the police
in hopefully trying to identify if anyone has any weapons.
If we find a weapon and potentially find a gun,
we might be able to link that back to our deceased.
They would have put out extra patrols around the estate, you know,
local officers speaking to members of the public to reassure them.
Having lived in Islington his whole life,
Imani's senseless death rocks the local community.
Everyone was devastated. Everyone knew Imani from the area.
Yeah, we had a lot of support.
He was part of a really close-knit community,
so it can be extremely traumatic, not only for the family members,
but also for his friends and neighbours,
to see what's happened.
CRAIG PINKNEY: It hurts when a member of the community gets killed.
Incidents like this send shockwaves through every single household.
You've got many parents that are thinking,
"Could this be my child next?"
Everyone was amazing.
And everybody just came forward,
as much information that they could give to the police.
When the police commence a homicide investigation,
they look at intelligence that they can glean
from speaking to the local community
cos a lot of people will come forward.
People don't like people getting murdered on their doorsteps.
Witnesses report seeing several men flee the scene,
including one on a motorbike.
But with no clues to why Imani was targeted,
the team needs a forensic breakthrough.
At the park, searches continue for the gun.
So, there's obviously that element of danger
because if there's a potential firearm on the scene,
it may need to be made safe.
SARAH THIRKELL: You'd always look under the vehicles,
in bushes, on the ground.
You could also consider getting a police dog
that specialises in searching for weapons.
They'll do a search of ways in and ways out,
in case someone's discarded a gun or they may have hidden it.
Finding nothing at ground level,
they exhaust all avenues in search of a much-needed lead.
They'll even look in guttering around
cos people have been known to throw stuff onto roofs.
Drains are searched by police search teams.
Searching a drain can be a particularly messy job
because there's a lot of debris that falls down into a drain.
So finding an item in a drain can be covered in quite a lot of gunk,
which then can obviously be detrimental
to any fingerprints or DNA evidence that might be on that item.
If necessary, they will call the local council
to suck up any water that might have been there
and lo and behold, they found a mobile phone.
This wasn't covered in dirt.
That tended to suggest that phone's been placed there quite recently.
The question is, is that phone linked to this incident?
This is another piece of the jigsaw.
It would be quite interesting to see
if there's any fingerprints on this phone.
The powder that I'm gonna use on this surface
cos it's smooth and shiny is aluminium powder.
Aluminium powder is really fine. It's the go-to powder of most CSIs.
OK.
And there's some very clear fingerprints on that surface.
Right, so we use some lifting tape to get the marks off here,
and then you just slowly rub the tape down onto the surface
and then pull it off.
And then the fingerprint is actually on this tape.
Digital experts also trace the phone's owner.
It's found to be registered to a local man,
35-year-old Demetrios Kyriacou.
A police database check reveals
that just two hours before Imani's murder...
..a crime report was filed
after a witness saw Kyriacou being violently robbed by masked men.
He had been robbed in Carville Street,
which isn't that far away from the scene.
The phones in the drain were the proceeds of that robbery.
It kind of makes you think that it may well be linked.
I learned something as a young detective,
and that is presume nothing, check everything.
Police head to Kyriacou's address.
He tells them the men also stole his Rolex watch.
Police asked if he knew the people that had done it,
and he said he didn't.
He refused to really assist the police
with any sort of investigation, and said he didn't wanna know.
Now, that's suspicious in itself.
Most law-abiding people would wanna know.
He becomes a person of interest.
NARRATOR: Police searching for the killer
of aspiring youth worker Imani Allaway-Muir
are profiling Demetrios Kyriacou
after recovering his stolen phone inside a drain at the crime scene.
Intelligence finds he has a history
of supplying large amounts of cannabis and cocaine
to drug dealers.
We're talking about inner city London
and areas within London
where you may see activity as it relates to drug dealing.
You may see some activity where individuals are in beef
and conflict with each other over territory, over postcodes.
Drug dealers get robbed by other people
because they know they have access to cash and drugs,
and that's exactly what I think happened in this case.
Clearly, there's some sort of gangland feud here.
With the stolen phone their only remaining lead from the crime scene,
detectives need to determine
if Kyriacou is linked to Imani's murder.
But as investigations begin, the lack of any solid leads
sees some media draw their own conclusions.
It was put out there that a man in the morning...
..was robbed of his Rolex,
and kind of portrayed that this young Black boy had done it
and he's got shot.
Headlines which are so far from the facts, it's unbelievable.
He's on his way home.
He doesn't want anything to do with it.
He's an upstanding young man, and they've sullied his reputation
in front of his family
when they're trying to remember him in the best possible light.
It's unforgivable.
We were very upset about it.
It was kind of portrayed that he deserves it
because he shouldn't have robbed, you know, the watch.
But he had nothing to do with anything.
The impact of sensational stories
really just exacerbates this idea about race,
that when we have these conversations -
typical scenario, young Black male, victim of gun violence -
it's very easy for people to point the finger and make the assumption
that the young Black male that was the victim was involved in things.
He didn't do the robbery,
cos he was coming home from my end to North London,
and the police could track the whole of his journey over
and where he'd went that day, cos of CCTV around the area.
It's always young Black boys and their lives don't matter.
We kept trying to get it changed,
that Imani's got nothing to do with it.
But police are convinced Kyriacou's involved.
He's lied about having his Rolex stolen
to cover up that they took his drugs and his phone
with the numbers of his buyers.
They can't really get to the root of the murder.
There's lots of circumstantial evidence...
..pointing to him as a person of interest.
With Kyriacou refusing to talk,
investigators look into his movements
at the time of Imani's murder.
Digital forensics these days
is one of the main lines of inquiry in any major incident.
You leave a footprint wherever you go.
Once you have a mobile phone and have the cell site data,
you can map out their network.
But it's not overnight. It'll take maybe weeks.
It's no point just having data.
You need to be able to understand it and interpret it.
Police also hunt down Kyriacou's attackers.
They were driving a black BMW.
It's really important for police to try and track that vehicle.
There may be vital forensic evidence inside that vehicle
that will help with the police investigation.
Using ANPR and CCTV,
police follow the car's movements after the robbery.
And that car turned out to be stolen.
The car travels south towards the Westbourne Estate
and parks up close to the murder scene.
Now, call me old-fashioned, but I don't believe in coincidences.
The police treated that as a secondary murder scene.
The vehicle is always taken away to a garage
so it can be examined in a clean, dry environment.
This helps to preserve any evidence.
You check the boot of the vehicle,
the glove box, any hiding places within that car.
The CSIs will be looking for any fingerprint and DNA evidence.
You could also be looking for potential fibre evidence
on the vehicle car seats.
The fact that the vehicle's been stolen
means that there's a huge amount of evidence in that vehicle
that may not be related to any incident at all.
There may be a lot of innocent persons' fingerprints
and DNA and detritus within that car
that's not relevant to any police investigation.
Eight weeks on from his tragic murder,
200 people come together to celebrate Imani's life.
PAULINE ALLAWAY: It was a beautiful send-off for Imani,
a very sad send-off.
Everyone came to the house, and we had Imani's body brought out,
outside the flat from the carriage,
and so everyone could be around and see him and touch him.
There were hundreds of people there from the local community,
from the local estate, friends and family.
This had far-reaching consequence.
We all marched from there
to the local church and had the service,
and then we went up to the cemetery.
Knowing that he's never coming back, it's like the final...
..erm, terrible, heartbreaking.
Just miss him every day.
Still talk to him like he's still coming home.
My blessed grandson.
Determined to get justice for Imani's family,
suspicions about Demetrios Kyriacou's involvement are growing.
Digital experts combing through his phone data have found
that in the seconds after he was robbed,
he contacted several associates -
one of his cocaine suppliers, James Nicholson,
Darren Dredge, a cannabis dealer,
Matthew Hardy, a lower-ranking foot soldier,
and Nathaniel Reece,
who has 35 prior drugs and burglary convictions.
Over the next hour,
the men gather at Kyriacou's address on the Six Acres Estate.
They all met up,
which is supported by digital communications
from their mobile phones.
They're all cell-sited in the same area.
Suspecting they're plotting something,
experts make a sinister discovery.
At 2:34pm, Kyriacou uses an app to locate his stolen phone.
He's turned on Find My Phone, tracked his own phone.
Using the app, the men zero in on the play area
on the Westbourne Estate.
Now we have a possible motive,
the motive being... revenge for a robbery.
Revenge attacks are simple.
You hit me, I hit you.
You disrespect me, I disrespect you back.
We're talking about status here.
It's the fact that an individual feels that he's shamed.
They want to go back at the quickest moment
to make individuals know that they can't be messed with
and this can't happen again.
And then it becomes a spiral of violence.
Having located his stolen phone,
15 minutes later, the men are on the move.
Hardy, Dredge and Nicholson head towards the Westbourne Estate,
parking up near to where the stolen phone has been located.
Reece and Kyriacou travel in the opposite direction,
towards Stroud Green.
Police suspect it's here they picked up the gun from an associate.
Minutes later,
phone data shows Reece and Kyriacou are back on the road.
ANPR shows them going into the Westbourne Estate.
CCTV footage supports that.
With Dredge, Hardy and Nicholson in position as lookouts,
Imani enters the play area.
Seconds later, Kyriacou and Reece park up on Bride Street.
As Imani stops to watch the football,
the men see the black car that was used in the robbery.
See the black BMW, put two and two together.
The scouts spot the men who committed the robbery
in the play area.
On the warpath, Kyriacou and Reece head down the alleyway.
They see Imani and wrongly assume he's involved.
DISTORTED GUNSHOTS
They shoot an innocent boy.
It was a young man in the wrong place at the wrong time,
who had his life cruelly taken from him.
That was very difficult, knowing Imani was a mistaken identity
and he was innocent, and all of this is for nothing...
..you know, and his life mattered, especially to us.
It's very rare to hear innocent people
getting caught up in a crossfire as it relates to gangs.
But let's think about it in terms of proximity.
When those beef and conflicts spill out into the wider community,
that's when we start to see the ripple effect of violence.
And unfortunately, the young man, Imani,
that was there at that particular time
felt the brute force of the anger that came from those individuals.
DR HEWINS: Absolutely devastating, particularly someone so young.
It's an absolute travesty.
Having somebody open fire
where there's potentially a high number of children
really does show something about the perpetrator in question,
their morals and their lack of care and compassion for others.
The five men are arrested on suspicion of murder.
The digital evidence putting them on the spot is pretty damning.
The suspects were in constant communication with each other,
prior to and post the offence occurring.
That is a conspiracy,
in as much that it was a common goal to commit that murder.
All deny having anything to do with Imani's murder.
They claim they only met up to check Kyriacou was OK
after being robbed before going out to deal drugs.
The team still needs evidence that proves beyond doubt
that they arrived at the scene armed and intending to kill.
Murder investigations go up to the day the prosecution ends.
You can still dig up evidence.
Having so many offenders on a case like this
is a huge amount of evidence.
There's a huge amount of cross-referencing
between the offenders, who did what, when did they do it,
corroborating their stories, any mobile phone downloads.
So having more than one offender at a crime scene, that's a big job.
Police secure warrants to search the men's addresses.
At Kyriacou's, several mobile phones are seized.
When digital forensics interpret one of the mobile phones,
they find an image in the photographs.
It's a huge piece of evidence, and if you put it all together,
it's starting to show that he was the catalyst for all this.
Motives are a number of things.
Can be monetary, power, territory, and in this case, it's revenge.
They found a photograph of what they believed to be the murder weapon.
He'd taken a photograph of it.
Having the forensic scientist look at that photograph
would help them to identify
if that was potentially the gun that was used.
The photograph does appear to be a semi-automatic 9mm calibre pistol,
and the cartridge retrieved from the incident was also a 9mm
and has the right sort of firing pin mark.
The firearms expert actually said,
as did the pathologist, having seen the gunshot wounds,
that is likely the type of gun that would have been used to shoot Imani.
It must be quite frustrating in this investigation
to never find the weapon,
and almost finding the photograph is second best.
You imagine that evidence in front of a jury?
It is very powerful.
Kyriacou insists the gun isn't his and wasn't used to kill Imani.
But in an ID parade,
witnesses from the scene identify Nathaniel Reece
as the angry man with the black gun.
This is an individual
that has been living a particular lifestyle for many, many years
and would have built a particular reputation.
These behaviours of criminality, violence,
would have desensitised him.
Empathy and sympathy towards victims
would have been something that would have been pushed to the side.
All five men are charged with murder.
WOMAN ON LOUD-HAILER: No justice, no peace.
ALL: No justice, no peace.
What do we want? Justice.
Who for? Imani.
What do we want? Justice.
Who for? Imani.
What do we want? Justice.
We had a march to the Old Bailey,
screaming out "Justice for Imani"
cos we wanted to make sure the perpetrators all got caught
and would go away.
That was our aim and our fight for Mani.
The trial was very long-winded.
I had to be there every day to know exactly what happened.
It was hard to face them.
Some days, you didn't want to look at them,
but you needed to see them
and stare them in the eye and let them know your pain.
The prosecution sets out the evidence
showing how Imani's tragic death unfolded.
DISTORTED GUNSHOTS
The echoing of the bullets round the courtroom.
I could hear Keetha, like, breathing... and, erm...
trying to hold back her tears and all that.
It was very difficult.
We were told that she has to move herself
because she might sway the jury by being upset.
You weren't allowed to show any emotions.
So it made you very angry.
The men continue to claim they're not Imani's killers,
but on the second day of the trial...
..Reece makes a dramatic U-turn,
pleading guilty to pulling the trigger.
I've only ever had one murderer plead guilty in my entire career,
and I've investigated loads of murders.
He was so disgusted, knowing he shot an innocent young boy.
Kyriacou's defence team insists he didn't know he was armed.
He claims the photo on his phone is of a firearm belonging to Reece.
But the data shows it was taken three weeks before Imani's murder,
when Reece wasn't with him.
So to the jury, you can prove that he's a liar,
that his account or his narrative can't be relied upon.
Offenders are aware of DNA and fingerprints.
You cannot live in this world now
without leaving some kind of digital footprint.
Kyriacou is also found guilty of Imani's murder.
His motive for this was revenge and hate.
Little doubt about that at all,
and in fact, the judge alluded to that in his summing up.
Dredge, Hardy and Nicholson are convicted of manslaughter.
Ahead of sentencing,
Keetha describes the catastrophic impact of losing Imani.
The day you took Imani,
you not only destroyed his life, but that of four children.
My children lost their brother, but also lost their mum,
a mum who was once filled with such happiness and joy,
and now to just see me crying, sad, lost and yearning for my son.
My little girl thinks it's a normal thing to do
to be in a cemetery every day,
as she was only one when Imani was murdered.
The pain we feel is unimaginable.
Imani was the glue to our family and loved by so many.
We did not choose this path of darkness and sorrow,
where every cell in your body aches.
The fourth of July will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Every time I close my eyes,
all I see is my son's lifeless body covered in blood.
The panic, fear and pain my poor child must have gone through.
I know by the route he had run
he was trying to make his way home to me.
Until you have lost a child,
you will never understand how hard and painful a trial is
to sit through and remain composed,
to see graphic photos of my son and hear of his final moments
and expected to show no emotion,
when every day I was just screaming inside,
having to hear my son's name being called by so many people
who had never even met him or knew him.
To them, he was just another murder case,
just another job to attend.
Imani is my baby.
I feel none of the eight defendants showed any remorse or compassion
for Imani, myself or his family,
despite them knowing Imani was not responsible
for any part of the robbery that took place.
Losing Imani has affected me in so many ways as a woman,
a mother and a human being.
Most days, I barely recognise myself.
My son should be here.
Imani loved life so much.
I will never get to see my son have children,
a wife, a career.
I feel as though I have been handed the life sentence, not them.
Imani will be forever missed, loved and remembered,
and our hearts will be forever broken
until we are back with our precious Imani.
I love you, my son.
Following Keetha's powerful statement,
Reece asks for no reduction to his sentence for pleading guilty.
I think he realised what an evil thing he'd actually done.
They actually felt Keetha's pain.
Reece and Kyriacou are sentenced to 33 and 31 years
for murder and supplying drugs.
Dredge and Hardy are found guilty of manslaughter
for acting as scouts.
They're sentenced to ten and seven-and-a-half years.
Nicholson is sentenced to 13 years for getting rid of the gun.
Everyone loved Imani, everyone.
You can see the people that come up to the cemetery
on special occasions.
We all have our birthdays up there. We always cut a cake with Imani.
So he's part of it, and when a new baby's born,
the baby's taken up there, have a picture with him,
you know, because that's what he always wanted, was a child.
He really wanted to be a father.
And he got robbed of that...
robbed of everything that he wanted to do.
Wanted to travel, pass his driving test.
But his main thing was to be a father.
Just miss him every day.
We talk about him all the time at home.
What laughs we used to have, and the joy we had with him.
That's Imani. Beautiful soul.