Damilola’s death changed my life ..that somebody as young as me could pass in such a horrific way was hard to understand..
John opens up on murder of friend
STAR Wars actor John Boyega has spoken for the first time about how his life has been shaped by the murder of his friend Damilola Taylor.
He says the 10-year-old’s death in 2000 spurred him and others to “aim further”.
John, 32, was inspired to make the revelations due to the death last weekend of Damilola’s dad Richard Taylor.
At the age of eight, John was one of the last people to see Damilola before he was stabbed to death in Peckham, South East London.
The actor said of that shocking time: “From the hours we left him in Peckham to the hours when I went home, and then the police were at our door and [the] investigation we were involved in, was life-changing, definitely altered my perspective.”
Describing his school friend as “flamboyant and charismatic”, he added: “Even though I was young, it was a shock to understand how mortality worked. To think that somebody as young as me could pass away in such a horrific way was hard for me to understand or comprehend.” John was speaking on Radio 4’s Last Word, an obituary show which was featuring the life story of Damilola’s dad, who died aged 75 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Mr Taylor had spent much of the past 24 years campaigning against knife crime and to improve the lives of disadvantaged children.
John said Damilola’s death “shaped me through the years and affected my perspective on certain things”.
The actor, who played Finn in three Star Wars films, recalled a poem written by his friend and read out at his funeral, in which he explored “how far he wanted his dreams to spread”.
John, who grew up in Peckham, said it was that poem that “gave birth to this mentality I had”.
He explained: “What is truly my dream? Do I have the guts to identify what my dream is? Am I too young to identify my dream and work towards it? After reading that poem, I was like, ‘yeah, I have no excuse. I want to be a movie star’.” He said he had deliberately chosen not to speak previously about his friendship with Damilola. John, whose other roles include the main character in 2020 movie Red, White and Blue, said: “I’m quite private in general, but with this specifically, it’s that celebrity thing of not wanting to get in front of very real-life news.”
But having been moved by Richard’s death, he added: “Now that he’s gone, if I don’t speak up now, when am I ever going to speak up?”
After the murder, Richard and his wife Gloria, who died in 2008, set up the Damilola Taylor Trust, saying they wanted their son to be remembered as a boy of hope.
John praised the organisation and added it had succeeded in turning the “tragic loss into something triumphant”.
Damilola was killed by gang members who slashed his thigh just a few months after he had moved to Britain from Nigeria with his mother, his brother Tunde and sister Gbemi.
He was attacked with a broken bottle as he walked home from a library and was found bleeding to death in a stairwell of a block of flats. After investigations and three trials costing the taxpayer £15million in police and court fees, his killers – brothers Ricky and Danny Preddie – were each handed an eight-year sentence in 2006 for manslaughter.
Now that he’s gone, if I don’t speak up now, when am I ever going to speak up?
JOHN BOYEGA ON TALKING ABOUT PAL AFTER RICHARD’S DEATH