Marcel Addai, 18, from Hoxton, east London was stabbed to death in December 2015 on the St John’s Estate, Pitfield Street. Those responsible were four members of the Fellows Court gang – Sheku Jalloh, 23, Rikell Rogers, 21, and Sodiq Adebayo, 23, were all sentenced to a minimum of 25 years, while Momar Faye, 19, was given 22 years.
The Fellows Court gang had been involved in rivalry between the Hoxton Boys (and indeed, the London Fields gang to the North), and Addai’s murder was a carefully calibrated show of force – Addai, who had been associated with the Hoxton Boys gang, was stabbed 14 times just near Evelyn Walk where he lived, in front of his friends and neighbours.
No random killing, the “brutal and ferocious” murder was deliberately staged in front of Mr Addai’s friends and neighbours, who lived in Evelyn Walk, which is about 200m (650ft) from where he was fatally attacked. They rolled up in a convoy of cars and chased him down.
The Fellows Court gang seemed to form in 2010, when they started making so-called Drill videos, which feature taunts at rival gangs, violent imagery – their first video features this lyric: “Fellows Court, we bust guns and don’t play fair.”