‘Knowing our son died alone fills us with pain’

THE parents of an aspiring engineer who was stabbed to death in a park have told of their grief as his teenage killer began a life sentence.

David Darko, 21, was knifed in South Norwood Recreation Ground near his home in Croydon on January 23 in a row during a botched drug deal.

The shop assistant, who planned to go to university to become a railway engineer, was lured to the park before he was stabbed in the stomach and left to die. He was found by a member of the public clutching a child’s rounders bat, emblazoned with the words Baseball Star. Despite the efforts of paramedics to save him, he died at the scene.

Darnell Martin, 19, of Crystal Palace, was yesterday jailed for life, to serve a minimum of 19 years, at the Old Bailey by Judge Paul Worsley, who issued a stern warning on the dangers of carrying knives. Mr Darko’s mother, Ivy, told how his family was haunted by not hide my face. I pray at night for him, but that won’t really work. No parent is prepared for the loss of a child, but when it happens their world is changed forever.”

Mr Darko had younger siblings and was a former student at Archbishop Lanfranc Academy in Thornton Heath and Croydon College.

Martin, who had a previous conviction for carrying a knife, claimed he acted in self-defence after Mr Darko swung the rounders bat at him.

Martin was convicted of murder after a trial. Sentencing him, Judge Paul Worsley said: “When will youngsters learn that if they go out with knives at night the chances for serious injury or death may come and is something the courts have had to deal with again and again?

“I doubt the sentence I have to pass will make much difference to these youngsters, but I hope they learn something and reflect upon the dangers they pose to themselves, their friends and their families.

“It is tragic seeing a family sit through a trial and have to listen to what happened to a loved one who met his death by someone armed with a knife.” Codefendant Joshua Asante, 19, of Thornton Heath, was cleared of murder.