Hackney schoolboy fatally stabbed on 16th birthday

Stabbed to death: Derek Boateng. Photograph: Gabriel Gauffre

There is a birthday card waiting for schoolboy Derek Boateng at his home in Hackney Central, but he will never get to open it.

Derek was fatally stabbed on the 393 bus on his birthday last month (April) and died just hours after he turned 16.

His father Davis, 58, and mother Comfort, 46, will bury the unopened card along with their son at his funeral at Islington Cemetery.

Mr Boateng, a former minicab driver, said that after his son left the family home for what was to be the last time on 23 April he bought the card and put some money inside as a present.

“I kept it here waiting for Derek to give it to him, but he didn’t come back,” he said. “I’ll put the card in his coffin.”

The Dutch national who attends the Resurrection Power Church in Stamford Hill, added: “It’s very sad. Every morning this boy would come and wake us up for his pocket money, but now we won’t see him.

“I went to his room, looking, watching his clothes hanging and his trainers. That is the end of this boy.”

Mr Boateng, who was born in Ghana and has lived in the UK since 1994, is angry at what he sees as politicians’ failure to end the continuing problem of gun and knife crime, which disproportionately affects young men.

He suggests tougher punishments and installing knife arches at schools could be part of the solution.

Derek’s burial, which will be attended by friends and family, takes place six days after the funeral of 19-year-old Joseph Burke-Monerville, a university student shot dead in Clapton in February.

Mr Boateng said: “It can’t go on like this. When the government hears there is a war going on somewhere, what do they do? They stand up. They say they want to go and stop it. What will they do about this?”

Derek, a keen artist who is said to have been interested in pursuing a career in engineering, was born at Homerton Hospital and had lived in Hackney all his life with his parents and two sisters, Josephine and Gifty.

After the stabbing, which happened in Highbury, he was taken to hospital, where his family maintained a vigil at his bedside.

Mr Boateng said: “He was on life support. We went there, but he died that very day. I saw that he was dead. The following day the doctors declared he had died, but I saw he was dead that very day. The brain was not working and the heart was not working. There was only life support. The way the doctors briefed us, you would know he was dead, but they didn’t want to tell us straight.”

A 15-year-old has been charged with the murder and is due to appear at the Old Bailey for a plea and case management hearing in July.