One video shows a boy being robbed for his shoes. Another shows two boys in hoods kicking in a front door. A third shows a boy stripped naked doing star jumps as he is forced to disavow a local gang.
The Discord server, a chatroom on a platform designed for discussing video games, was set up in the 10 days since 14-year-old Eghosa Ogbebor was shot dead in broad daylight in Woolwich, south-east London, earlier this month.
While many of the messages make a spectator sport of London’s teenage violence, others are from children trying to understand how a boy they knew from school could have been killed with a weapon of war.
Eghosa is the first 14-year-old to be shot dead in London for nearly 10 years. Two other teens – aged 14 and 15 – were killed with knives in the Woolwich area in the last 18 months.
“All the soldiers jumped off and they [are] just grooming random YGs [young Gs, or gangsters],” one group member wrote, suggesting that older members of a local gang – known as 1800 – were using young teens to fight turf wars on their behalf. “They’re a grooming gang,” another wrote. It is not yet clear whether any gang connection will be alleged in Eghosa’s case.
The chatroom is an online reflection of a bleak reality.
A close friend of Eghosa’s mother broke down in tears at the family home. “We don’t know what we are going to do. We don’t know what we got wrong,” she said. “Where are these children getting this from? Where do they find a gun?”
She described Eghosa as “a friendly child” who loved music and said he had told his parents that he was going to see friends on the day he died.
Sources said Eghosa, who made drill rap music under the name Y Risky, had been groomed by the 1800 gang. He died in the north of the borough in an area known to be linked to the Young Dockyard Boys (YDB) gang. Prosecutors have not yet said whether they allege his killing was gang-motivated.
A civil servant who lives near where Eghosa died said police and local authorities had long been guilty of a “reactive rather than a proactive response” to violence in the area.
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“We’ve had problems round here for a long time. They’re the sort of problems you have in most areas of a big city that are socially deprived,” he said, saying drug users and dealers had been known to use a nearby stairwell.
Pointing to the floor a couple of doors away, he said: “You can still see the outline of where his body was. I’ve got two young kids. We’ve asked [the council] for a key fob system for the doors here, for security lights and CCTV. They never get anything done. It just feels like they don’t care.”
Eghosa was killed a short walk from where Kelyan Bokassa, 14, was stabbed to death last January. His friend Daejaun Campbell, 15, had been stabbed to death the previous September. Just over a mile away, at the place where Daejaun died, his mother, Jodian Taylor, said a mobile CCTV camera brought in after her son’s death to cover the known drug dealing spot had been removed and that authorities were failing to protect children from grooming.
“They know what happens in these little alleyways. What is there to instil confidence in the residents? Nothing.”
The deaths come despite an overall reduction in youth violence and knife crime in the borough and citywide.
A spokesperson for Greenwich said the borough works to disrupt grooming and exploitation with targeted interventions. It has increased funding to £4.4m for extra community enforcement and police on the streets and funds would “also be used to improve street lighting and upgrade CCTV systems”.
She said: “Our thoughts continue to be with Eghosa’s family and friends at this incredibly difficult time,” she said. “Our teams are working closely with police and Eghosa’s family to offer support in any way we can.”
Discord, which has a minimum user age of 13, said the platform “does not tolerate the glorification or promotion of violence” and it had “removed the server for violating our policy against violent and graphic content”.
On Friday night, Scotland Yard said a 16-year-old boy had been charged with Eghosa’s murder. Six other suspects, aged between 14 and 16, have been released on bail and a 16-year-old arrested on Friday remains in custody.