Sex, mayhem and a gun death.Why were Yardies allowed to invade a Surrey village idyll?
OuTSIdE a picturesque semi bearing the name Badgers Run, in the leafy Surrey village of Headley — population 643 — is a half-drunk bottle of sparkling rosé.
The house (but not the wine) belongs to Anne Leguen de Lacroix, clerk to the parish council. It is not the only sign of raucous behaviour in the wealthy hamlet.
Neighbouring gardens and pathways are strewn not just with empty bottles (champagne, cognac, cherry wine) but more shocking detritus — including used condoms — the legacy of a riotous party which, as unlikely as it might seem given the genteel setting, ended in death and mayhem a week ago. Police are still combing the vicinity for evidence, which is why the debris hasn’t been cleared away.
This is not just a story, though, about an event that spiralled out of control with tragic consequences. Residents say it was a scandal that the extravaganza, attracting hundreds of revellers, thought to be mainly from the Caribbean community in Brixton, was allowed to go ahead.
At best, the police and council have been accused of disregarding the views of local people; at worst, of being afraid to turn down the application for a drinks and entertainment licence due to political correctness. Either way, recent events have had a disastrous effect on Headley.
The party in question, we now know, was advertised on the internet with online flyers featuring a Jamaican rapper and a scantily dressed woman, who referred to herself on social media as a ‘bad b****’. There was a mobile number to call for those who wanted to attend the bash at a thenundisclosed ‘Posh Location In The Hills’.
The secrecy echoed the tactics typically used by organisers of illegal raves in disused warehouses in the Eighties and Nineties.
Where do you think that ‘posh location’ turned out to be? In a bungalow — next to the historic parish church of St Mary The Virgin, just up the lane from Miss Lacroix. Could there have been a less suitable setting for the event last Sunday? To the unsuspecting folk of Headley, among them many retired professionals, it must have seemed like the entire population of South London was descending on the village in convoys of flash cars (BMWs, Mercedes, Porches) and at least one hired coach.
All afternoon and late into the night, crowds of half-naked young women in G-string bikinis, hot pants and heels spilled out of the vehicles near the newly-refurbished hall, where the WI meet, before teetering past Badgers Run and the home of Miss Lacroix’s neighbour, 76-year- old Celia Stewart, before disappearing into the aforementioned bungalow beside the vicarage.
How many guests were crammed into the property? 100? 200? It was nearer 500, actually, which meant partygoers almost outnumbered villagers.
Soon the earth began to shake with the thump of reggae music. driveways were blocked by double (even triple) parked cars in the main, narrow lane running through Headley (‘it looked like Piccadilly Circus,’ said a villager).
drivers were ‘unpleasant and rude’ when asked to move. One local was almost run over in the ensuing chaos.
Then, in the early hours, those residents who had managed to get some sleep through the thunderous, incessant din were woken by the sound of gunshots and a police helicopter flying overhead.
In the garden of the bungalow a man lay dead and a woman was in hospital after being blasted in the leg. Witnesses said several guests were suspected of being Yardies, a term for Jamaican-born gangsters originally from the backyards of Kingston, the capital of the Caribbean island.
detectives from Scotland Yard’s Trident unit, which specialises in gangrelated crime, are now helping the Surrey force with the investigation.
Who would ever have predicted that Headley, nestled in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty not far from Epsom racecourse, would one day find itself at the centre of such an inquiry?
Among the small number of crimes reported in Headley since January is the theft of a water feature from a garden.
When told there had been a shooting, a woman living near the scene replied: ‘What, a Pokemon shooting?’
Pokemon hunters, in search of the cartoon characters using the app on their smartphones, had apparently been spotted earlier that day in the grounds of the church.
Why on earth, residents have demanded to know, was permission granted for the event — on a Sunday of all days — in the first place?
The huge gathering was classed as a ‘private garden party’, a description conjuring up an image of Pimm’s being served on the lawn.
Inexplicably, not a single objection was raised by the police.
As such, the application for a licence to sell alcohol and provide food and entertainment was automatically approved by Mole Valley district Council, even though a similar party last year prompted the same furious complaints from the village.
Police have since admitted that the local authority was not made aware of those complaints — a fact which is now the subject of an internal review.
An unfortunate oversight, or did political correctness play a part in the decision, as some are asking, over misplaced concerns that refusal might lead to accusations of racism? ‘I expect they [the police and council] were walking on eggshells when it came to this application,’ said one local this week.
The organisers live in Headley. They’re the couple featured in those flyers: Jamaican rapper Jason White, 21, known by his stage name ‘Braintear Spookie’ and his manager and partner, mother- of-two, Summerlyn Farquharson, 29, aka the ‘bad b****’.
The pair have been renting the Headley property, with six bedrooms and an indoor and outdoor pool, for up to £5,000 a month since 2014.
They use it to run a lucrative business promoting parties. Ticket receipts alone from the latest shindig (entry cost £20) more than covered the rent, raking in at least £10,000.
Miss Farquharson collected the money in person from some of those in Brixton who paid in advance.
But the real money spinner was the sale of alcohol. A £30 bottle of Hennessy cognac or Ciroc Vodka was priced at £90 on the night. ‘ Everyone knows they were being “bumped”, but you cannot take your own booze inside, else you look a like a cheapskate,’ a young woman who was at the party told us. ‘And everyone drinks the most expensive spirits as it’s about showing off and looking rich.’
Sunday’s extravaganza was the third such party held in the bungalow.
Miss Farquharson is now busy promoting two further parties (away from Headley) planned for next month, including one ‘at a venue near you’ on August 28. So be warned.
Photographs on Facebook appear to show her enjoying the financial rewards — posing with expensive cars, wads of cash and bottles of champagne. Let’s hope the taxman is aware of her activities.
She was back doing what she does best again after the fatal shooting, posting videos of herself on the social media website. One such clip shows her flaunting her cleavage in a gold Moschino leotard — but showing no remorse for what happened, it seems.
Before moving to Surrey, Miss Farquharson lived in Tottenham, North London, with the father of her two children. They separated three years ago.
Her new neighbourhood was rated the seventh best place to live in Britain in a recent ‘quality of life’ survey.
It is popular with hikers and cyclists. The Olympic bike road race passed this way in 2012. Many residents also own horses. until not so long ago, the village had a blacksmith.
Cricket has been played on the green since 1860 and there is a thriving amateur dramatic society; two episodes of TV’s The Vicar Of dibley will be performed in the village hall in October.
The event was certainly well planned. unbeknown to residents, Miss Farquharson and her boyfriend had been marketing Sunday’s pool party for months on social media.
The first revellers began to arrive after 3.30pm. London is only 20 miles away, which is maybe one reason why the couple moved to Headley.
But by the evening, david Preedy, chairman of the parish council, was becoming concerned. ‘I walked up [to the bungalow] at 8pm and there were people assembling,’ he said.
‘ They weren’t people from the community. I could hear music but I couldn’t see much because the place has an enclosed garden. I called the police and asked them to patrol.’
Just after 10pm, Mr Preedy tweeted to residents: ‘Police have attended party at Headley to advise organisers to remain considerate to neighbours. Hope this will keep things acceptable.’ What happened was the opposite. ‘There was smashed glass everywhere,’ said retired photographer Celia Stewart. ‘You could hear the car tyres crunching over it.
‘There were hundreds of people. I’ve lived here for 19 years and I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Miss Lacroix added: ‘I was disgusted that even some ladies used the path beside my house as a toilet.’
Inside the bungalow the numbers kept swelling. ‘I got there just after 11pm and the whole place was rammed,’ said the young woman quoted earlier.
‘The vibe was all right, though. But a few hours later a different crowd arrived. Because it was so packed, it created a bad atmosphere. It was very tense. I’m not saying anyone thought there was going to be a shooting, but you could tell it might kick off.’
It was 2.30am when the trouble erupted. ‘It was terrifying,’ the source said. ‘I was just a few feet away. The crowd split in two and everyone ran.
‘Some people dived or fell into the swimming pool outside, which had been empty of people. You had no idea who was firing, or why. People were getting trampled on. There was screaming and shouting. It was chaos.’
The dead man has been named as Ricardo Hunter. Tributes to him were made on social media, with one friend writing she was ‘speechless’.
Another posted on Facebook: ‘Miss him . . . gone too soon.’
The 34-year-old, it has now emerged, was cleared of possessing a firearm in
There were 500 partygoers in one bungalow ‘People were trampled on . . . It was chaos’
2014 following an Old Bailey trial. He had been accused of being one of three men who fired ‘indiscriminately’ into a crowd during a party in 2013.
‘No one knew who the dead guy was as none of the people who had come with him stuck around,’ the female partygoer said. ‘But there was one person who knew him. He had a street name [‘Forty’] from Brixton. I had heard his name before.
‘People have since been saying he was a gangster, a drug dealer who had robbed and attacked people himself. Looking back, I don’t know what I was doing there.’
Back in the village, Julie Ho-A-Shoo, who runs the general store and tearoom with her son Glen, got up at 5.30am as usual to collect the morning papers from the village hall. They weren’t there.
Instead, she found empty champagne bottles outside. Further up the lane, a black car was abandoned across the road and many of the garden plants and bushes, she noticed, had been flattened. ‘It was devastation,’ she said. ‘A police officer told me, “Look, you won’t be getting your papers today because the village has been blocked off.” ’
Like everyone in Headley, Julie has one question: Why?
‘It’s abominable that they granted this licence. People have to get up for work. There are children living nearby. It’s a shame for the village. This is a lovely spot.’
The same question was asked last year. Complaints about the last party were noted in the minutes of the parish council meeting in September 2015. ‘I spoke to the licensing officer at Mole valley last year,’ said Mr Preedy. ‘He explained that before a Temporary Event Notice, the police and environmental health must be consulted, but they don’t have to consult with parish councils or residents. ‘I said, “I hope if there is another application, what happened would Aftermath: The venue for the pool party and (above) organisers Jason White and Summerlyn Farquharson be taken into account and it would be refused.” ’
On Sunday, Mr Preedy and the residents of Headley discovered that was not the case.
Additional reporting by Dominik Lemanski.