SON OF WINDRUSH MIGRANT MURDERED ON HIS DOORSTEP FOR CHALLENGING DRUG DEALERS
DETECTIVES are hunting drug dealers who beat the son of a Windrush immigrant to death on his doorstep after he told them to move on. Ian Tomlin, 46, had told dealers not to sell drugs in the corridor outside his flat because his children lived there, his family said. He was left in a pool of blood and died at the scene. Shocked witnesses said the ‘devoted’ father of two may also have been stabbed in the neck in the attack in Battersea, South London, on Wednesday evening. Mr Tomlin’s grieving father Cecil, 84, who arrived from Jamaica in the 1950s as part of
the ‘Windrush generation’, said his son shared his fears over people dealing drugs outside his ground floor flat two months ago. The father of five, who lives nearby, said: ‘The attack was inside the block. He said, “Don’t sell here!”
‘He has been afraid of them. He’d told them to go away before and I think they had threatened him before and attacked him one time too.
‘He was a good man, he works hard. He was a good father who loved his kids, he loved playing with them in the park.’
Mr Tomlin’s children, a boy and a girl aged around ten, are said to live with their mother in another flat in the same block.
His father added: ‘The problem with drug dealers has got much worse. They sit on the stairs or the bench and smoke cannabis. If I cause trouble I’m scared they’ll kill me.
‘I’ve rung the police before to tell them they are doing it and they did nothing. Maybe if they came more often the attack on Ian wouldn’t have happened.’
The police were aware the block of flats was a drug-dealing hotspot, one resident claimed.
A father, who saw police trying to resuscitate Mr Tomlin, said: ‘He’s been stabbed in his neck and the head. There was blood everywhere. The first floor is used for dealing. Police know it happens every single day.’
Neighbours said Mr Tomlin, who worked as a van driver for the council, was a ‘devoted dad’. They added that the estate was terrorised by dealers.
One said: ‘Everyone is too afraid to talk. I phone in complaints but nothing happens. There are always problems around here, I saw a man get cornered by two guys yesterday, they pulled a huge knife on him.’
Police cordons remained at the scene yesterday. No arrests have been made.
Mr Tomlin was the 113th person murdered in the capital so far this year.