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Karl Gbedemah

Age: 47

Sex: male

Date: 1 Aug 2008

Place: Live and Let Live, 264 Romford Road, Forest Gate, East London

Karl Gbedemah was shot in the head in the early hours of 1 August 2008. 

He had been begging in the street at the time and was hit by a stray bullet fired during an altercation outside the Live and Let Live in Romford Road, Forest Gate. 

It was said that the shots had been fired after a group of men threw bottles at another group outside the club in Sprowston Road.

Karl Gbedemah was taken to hospital around 4.45am but died less than an hour later.

A man was tried for his murder in 2010 but acquitted. He had been a DJ. He admitted to having been at the Live and Let Live club that night, but said that someone had tried to snatch his chunky gold bracelet from him and that he had gone home with his lover and had been at her flat in Earlham Grove at the time of the murder and denied having been the gunman.

The court heard that a few days after the murder that the man had obtained a Ghanaian passport and bought a £767 air flight to Ghana, leaving from Gatwick on 8 August 2008. However, the man said that he had been planning the trip for some time as his parents were born there and he had a brother and other relatives living there and he had wanted to go out there and start up a taxi business. 

The gun was thought to have been a converted Baikal pistol.

Karl Gbedemah had also been known as Kudjo and had one child.

In September 2013 a man with the same name and age as the man tried was convicted for possessing a firearm. The man was arrested in July 2012 after the police tried to stop a Lexus car known to be used by gang members. They chased it through Newham and Barking and Dagenham and later found it abandoned in Kennedy Road, Dagenham. They then found a loaded gun nearby that a witness had seen being thrown from the car. The police also found a mobile phone in the car, along with DNA, which led them to the man and another man. The man was sentenced to over six years.


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