Just 27 seconds of savagery left Charlie - and one of his killers - bleeding to ... trends now
Yesterday, the Mail began a three-part investigation into the scourge of knife crime in the capital. Not for five years has London seen such a rapid rise – up 20 per cent in a year, with some 14,500 incidents recorded.
Since Sadiq Khan first sought office as Mayor in 2016, promising to vastly reduce the use of 'Stop and Search' – the controversial police tactic that many regard as the most effective way to disarm gang members – knife crime has risen 54 per cent.
This week, Khan seeks a third term at City Hall, but his tough campaign talk on crime pales against a lamentable record.
In the second part of our landmark series, The Mail on Sunday examines a harrowing case that ended in two utterly pointless deaths, one of them the completely innocent teenager Charlie Bartolo...
Charlie Bartolo was stabbed to death in Abbey Wood south-west London after he was rammed off his dirt bike
Charlie was due to sit his GCSEs, after which he had lined up an apprenticeship as an electrician and plumber
On a Saturday afternoon in November 2022, just after 5pm, police in south-east London were confronted with the grimmest of puzzles – the bodies of two 16-year-old boys, less than a mile apart, both of whom had been stabbed.
'It was very confusing for us at the start,' says Detective Chief Inspector Kate Blackburn.
'Separate 999 calls came in within six minutes of each other. We did not even know who had died first or if they were linked.'
Here we tell, minute by heartbreaking minute, the story that encapsulates the wickedness, futility and everyday nihilism of the gang violence Khan has failed so dismally to address…
Saturday morning November 26 2022Charlie Bartolo is a loud, jokey boy of 16 with a quiff of blond hair who is always willing to play football with the young members of his extended family, or take them to the nearby lake. He's popular at Bexley Heath Academy in Abbey Wood, south-east London, and is due to sit his GCSEs, after which he has lined up an apprenticeship as an electrician and plumber.
He spends Saturday at home with his mum Emma who describes him as her 'pride and joy'.
Kearne Solanke, meanwhile, also wants to be an electrician. Sixteen as well, he has enrolled on an electrical installation course at college and been offered a supermarket job at Iceland.
He lives a ten-minute walk from Charlie in Thamesmead, also with his mum, as his father has returned to Nigeria. Solanke spends Saturday morning with his mum.
12.12pmSolanke's friends Hussain Bah and Alagie Jobe are driving a black Nissan Qashqai they had stolen the previous night. They are cousins, aged 19, whose family moved to the UK from The Gambia.
They stop to pick up a third friend Jake Debonsu, 17, who lives with his Ghanaian mum and five sisters. Bah and Jobe also come from large families and share bedrooms with their brothers.
As Bah drives, he feels the electronic tag rub his ankle, a reminder he is on post-conviction bail.
Since Sadiq Khan first sought office as Mayor in 2016, promising to vastly reduce the use of 'Stop and Search' knife crime has risen 54 per cent
Five months before, he and Jobe were in a chicken takeaway when a brawl erupted on the street. The fight didn't involve him but he joined it anyway, pulling from his waistband a large zombie knife.
He lunged into the crowd, indiscriminately stabbing a friend in the thigh.
His pal was put into an induced coma and given four blood transfusions, remaining in hospital for three weeks. Everyone in the car Bah drives is armed with a knife. It is standard. Debonsu shows off his as, he admitted later, he does not want 'to look like a pussy'.
1.03The car pulls up outside a 'trap house' in Titmuss Avenue – a home that has been overrun by a gang, where teenagers smoke cannabis and meet friends. They pop in and out of the Post Office next door.
Despite being expensively dressed in a black £800 Moncler jacket, Bah shoplifts a few sweets. Jobe is equally well dressed in a Canada Goose jacket, the likes of which will become so prized in the capital that gangs will mug them off wearers' backs.
Bah, Jobe, Solanke and Debonsu are members of the T-Block gang, which has a longstanding feud with the A-Town gang in neighbouring Abbey Wood, where Charlie Bartolo lives.
Sammie Shallangwa, left, and Jake Debonsu were part of the group that murdered Charlie
The feud is not about organised crime, drugs or deprivation. The boys live in a pleasant area made up of blocks of flats and family homes with front and back gardens and open, green spaces.
The Hawksmoor Youth Hub that Solanke and his friends attend is near Water Lily Walk and behind its brightly-painted wall, decorated with frogs, falcons and honey bees, is a nature reserve.
But the youths are only interested in two things: being 'active', meaning they are ready to stab and retaliate for their gang, and being a 'driller' – someone who listens to drill music, the violent genre that glorifies knives and stabbing. But for now, it is a sunny afternoon so they relax outside the trap house, a seemingly laid-back group of boys enjoying Saturday.
4.22Solanke joins them.
4.23Of the group, five get into the car – Bah, Jobe, Solanke, Debonsu and the youngest, 15-year-old Sammie Shallangwa. He is small with delicate, almost feminine features, his hair twisted into long, thin plaits that corkscrew round his head.
His older siblings by his Nigerian parents have long left home. Being the indulged only child in the household has encouraged bad behaviour. A month before, he and a friend waylaid a boy outside a school by punching him to the ground and stabbing his legs.
Yet, all the boys in the car are in school or college and have reasonable attendance records.
4.30They drive to Debonsu's house where he picks up his Canada Goose jacket.
4.40Charlie Bartolo has a surprise. His Christmas present from his mum arrives a month early – a scrambler or dirt motorbike with big wheels and a loud exhaust. Charlie is eager to give it a go, despite it already being dark outside. As he pushes his new bike through the door, he turns back and grins at his mother.
She recalls: 'His smile was from ear to ear. He was so grateful and thankful.' An innocent teenager out to enjoy his new present. 'Never did I think that would be the last time I saw my boy.'
Killers Hussain Bah, left, and Alagie Jobe were driving a black Nissan Qashqai they had stolen the previous night
Solanke posts a picture on social media site Snapchat of himself vaping in the back of the stolen Qashqai. The car thumps to the sound of drill music, its
