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Malachi Brooks

Age: 21

Sex: male

Date: 28 Mar 2017

Place: Surrey Lane, Battersea, SW11

Malachi Brooks was stabbed in Surrey Lane, Battersea in a targeted attack whilst he was on his way home in the early hours of Tuesday 28 March 2017.

He was ambushed at about 1am as he was returning home from a friend’s house near Prince George's primary school in Battersea. It was said that four men wearing hooded tops, face coverings and balaclavas pulled up in a Nissan Micra car and that three of them got out and attacked him and then got back in the car and drove off.

People that lived in Surrey Lane heard him screaming and called the emergency services who arrived shortly after and spent an hour performing roadside surgery, however, he died at the scene at 1.55am.

His post mortem stated that he died from a stab wound to the heart.

The police said, 'Mr Brooks was stabbed to death. It was planned and calculated with all the hallmarks of gang crime'.

The Nissan Micra car was seen 20 minutes later on Weir Road industrial estate  in Wimbledon at 1.20am and it was later set on fire at 4.10am the following day.

The car was seen driving off in CCTV and after it was dumped the four suspects left it and were seen in CCTV going off along the towpath that led to a pathway running along the river Wandle.

Three people were convicted for perverting the course of justice and arson offences relating to the setting of the car on fire which was said to have been to destroy any forensic evidence such as fingerprints and DNA that was left in it.

The three men were:

  • 20 year old: Perverting the course of justice - 4 years.
  • 27 year old: Arson - 21 months.
  • 23 year old: Arson and perverting the course of justice - 21 months.

It was reported that the 27-year-old had made arrangements by a mobile phone between 2.43am and 3.25am on 29 March 2017 to get a taxi and that he had met up at Keppel Court with the 23-year-old before they went off together in the taxi to a petrol station on Balham High Road where the taxi driver saw them get some petrol in a can before he dropped them off near the Weir Road industrial estate and that they then later set the Nissan Micra car on fire. The 23-year-old said that he had been paid £100 to help.

The 20-year-old and 27-year-old men had initially been charged with Malachi Brooks's murder, but the murder charges were later dropped.

Evidence showed that the Nissan Micra car had been stolen in Mitcham five days before the murder and that it had been regularly driven by the 20-year-old. The 20-year-old man was said to have been a member of the Tooting Trap Stars gang.

The police said that they were sure that there were people in the South Tooting or broader South London area who knew who carried out the murder.

Malachi Brooks had been a carpenter.


*map pointers are rough estimates based on known location details as per Place field above.