The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Stalker bombarded grieving sister with ‘evil’ Snapchats
Dwaine Boakye jailed for posing as murdered boy’s killer in month-long campaign of harassment
A STALKER bombarded the grieving sister of a murdered schoolboy with Snapchat taunts by pretending to be the killer messaging her from jail.
Dwaine Boakye derived a “perverse” pleasure from sending “evil bile” to Chloe Bednar, whose brother Breck, 14, was killed after being groomed through an internet gaming site in 2014, Canterbury Crown Court heard.
Boakye launched a month-long campaign in which he pretended to be Lewis Daynes, Breck’s murderer, sending grotesque messages revelling in the violent attack.
Sentencing the hairdresser to threeand-a-half years imprisonment, Judge Simon Taylor condemned Boakye as a “cowardly” stalker whose “depraved behaviour was fuelled by the anonymity of the internet”.
Lorin LaFave, Breck and Chloe’s mother, has called on social media companies to release data immediately to assist in criminal investigations after the stalking case took five years before culminating in Boakye’s imprisonment.
Ms LaFave, who has campaigned for improvements to online safety, said: “This sentence sends a message to online predators that they will be found and cannot hide behind their screens whilst abusing people. There will be consequences for their criminal behaviour. However, I understand Snapchat did not hand over details of Boakye’s accounts immediately because they were protecting their client, the suspect in this case.”
She added that she now hopes the Online Safety Bill will ensure social media companies “take responsibility for what happens on their platforms and that profits cannot be the top concerns.” The court heard that one of a number of reasons for delays in the case stemmed from Kent Police having to send “international requests to obtain material from Snapchat”, a US-based company, to establish Boakye was the stalker.
In 2019, Boakye, then 19, used numerous social media accounts, including Snapchat profiles set up in Breck’s name, to contact Chloe, then 17. He sent her a picture of her with her brother with the message: “I will be home soon.” Another featured a photograph of Breck, asking: “Let’s see his body then”. One message showed a picture of a skeleton with the message “RIP Breck.”
Boakye then posed as Daynes, who was jailed for life for murdering Breck after meeting him online and luring him to his home. He wrote: “I’m sorry Breck ended up dead… I wanted him and he didn’t want me and I didn’t take rejection well. I got angry.” He added: “When I get out in 21 years, I’ll come see you. Right now, I have my family to do it for me. Your friend, Lewis Daynes.”
Chloe, then an A-Level student, was left deeply “distressed, scared and confused”, needing counselling, the court heard. The family reported the stalking to police. Boakye, from Croydon, was arrested in 2019.
Boakye, now 25, has pleaded guilty to stalking and two offences of sending malicious communications. A psychiatrist concluded he was not suffering any personality or mental illness.
A Snapchat spokesman said: “This is a horrendous ordeal and our deepest sympathies are with Ms Lafave and her family. If we become aware of anyone using Snapchat for harassment, we investigate and remove the account.