Budding engineer aged 15 is killed by samurai sword gang in the street
A BOY of 15 was stabbed to death by a balaclava- clad gang wielding a samurai sword.
Jermaine Goupall, who had ambitions of becoming an engineer, had spent Tuesday afternoon with his friends at the cinema.
But as he walked home that evening, the teenager was chased by a gang of thugs and stabbed to death less than half a mile from his family’s £ 600,000 home in south London.
His death is the latest in a spate of stabbings, with Jermaine becoming the 15th teenager to be killed in a knife attack in the capital this year – and the second in less than 24 hours.
Last night, his heartbroken family told how the teenager had simply been in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ and pleaded to the public to help find his killers. Paying tribute, his father said told how his sports-mad son, who was a talented mathematician, had been ‘loved by everyone’. The killing comes as police have been forced to revive stop and search procedures following an explosion in youth violence, with 20 crimes a day being reported in the capital alone.
The Metropolitan Police have launched a murder investigation.
Jermaine, who studied at Catholic academy St Joseph’s College, had spent the day catching up with friends at the cinema, later going out to dinner. But as he walked home at 11pm in Thornton Heath, Croydon, it is believed he and a friend were chased by a gang armed with a sword.
The thugs, who were not from the area, caught up with the pair as they rounded a corner in front of a row of shops. Jermaine’s friend is said to have managed to hide under a nearby 4x4, but Jermaine was stabbed several times. Locals told how they heard him screaming ‘help, help’, and found him covered in blood from a stab wound in the side. Paramedics tried to help him but he was pronounced dead shortly after midnight.
Billal Zafar, 27, whose family own a Cost-Cutter opposite the scene, said he had been told the gang used a Samurai sword and were wearing balaclavas.
Yesterday, friends and family left bouquets at the scene as uniformed officers kept guard. Speaking at the family’s home, Jermaine’s father Stanley Goupall, 50, an electrical engineer, said: ‘Jermaine was a lovely person and adored by the community and his friends and family. He was very good at maths and wanted to be a gas engineer and had talked about being an architect, he was very talented.’