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Star Wars actor John Boyega has spoken about being one of the last people to see friend Damilola Taylor before the child was killed in 2000.
Taylor was just 10 when he died in the stairwell of his North Peckham Estate home in London, having been stabbed in the thigh with a broken beer bottle on his journey home. Danny and Ricky Preddie, brothers who were 12 and 13 at the time, were later convicted of manslaughter over his death in 2006. Taylor’s death, and his family’s subsequent, years-long search for justice, became one of the United Kingdom’s most high-profile cases.
Over 26 years on from the tragedy, Boyega – who attended Oliver Goldsmith Primary School with Taylor – has revisited Taylor’s death and the impact it had on both his life and the Peckham community for BBC documentary Damilola: The Untold Story.
On 27 November 2000, Boyega and his sister Grace, who was in the same class as Taylor and had been appointed his chaperone when he joined the school, had walked him part of the way home after being at Peckham Library together. Shortly afterwards, Taylor was attacked and eventually found, bleeding heavily, just metres from his home in a stairwell on the estate. He died at King’s College Hospital.
“I can still see the flashing lights of the police cars, flashing in the estate,” Boyega told the cameras. “They said that something had happened to Damilola and they had found out that we were some of the last people with him.
“Grace started crying and screaming. A 10-year-old boy. It doesn’t make any sense. Grace, she was finished. I never heard those kind of cries and echoes in the house. I was frightened out of my mind. I didn’t know kids could die.”
Grace said in the documentary that her class was told the next day about Taylor’s death. “People were screaming,” she said. “Just thinking back to when we went to the library, I feel like I should have walked him home. I know it’s so long ago and you can’t go back in time to change anything, but I don’t know what I could have done in that moment, but maybe I could have still saved his life.”
Boyega said that after Taylor’s death, there “wasn’t really much outside” for him. “I liked my room, I liked chilling in our house, in our flat. I would just draw, sketch or I’d be playing with action figures,” he continued. “At least I’m safe at the end of the day. Damilola was a Nigerian like me, lived down the street with my parents, same textured hair as me. It could have been any one of us.”
He added that he was terrified that he could be next to die and that Taylor’s death motivated him to pursue his acting dreams.
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“It was a consistent thing in my mind. I’m going to be on Rye Lane, near the Peckham multiplex, opposite the McDonald’s, and someone’s going to come and do that to me,” he said. “It’s going to be my face on a t-shirt and then eventually everyone will move on. You play that again and again and again. I’m next.
“I was on a timer. It was no B, no C options for me. I quickly found what I wanted to do soon after Damilola’s death. At 10 years old, I got my scholarship to Theatre Peckham. I was in pursuit of this from that moment forward because of the reality of what could potentially happen. I was exposed to a lot so at a very young age, I knew what I wanted to do because I had individuals who inspired that.”
Boyega also revealed that Taylor wrote a poem before his death, which the children at his primary school would often recite. “I will travel far and wide to choose my destiny and remodel the world. I know it is my destiny to defend the world, which I hope to achieve in my lifetime,” he said, reading the poem.
“Damilola didn’t listen to the fear. From that poem, he had plans and he honestly came across as if he didn’t care about the environment, he was more fixated about where he was going. So what’s my excuse?” Boyega said.
After leaving school, Boyega trained with the Identity School of Acting and appeared in Attack the Block before his breakout role as stormtrooper Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He has since starred in its two sequels as well as Detroit, Pacific Rim Uprising, The Woman King and TV drama Small Axe.
Damilola: The Untold Story looks at the final 24 hours of Taylor’s life, with his friends, family and figures involved in the investigation being interviewed.
The BBC documentary airs on Monday 5 October at 9pm on BBC Two.