Age: 43
Sex: male
Date: 12 Jul 2020
Place: Betts Park, Penge, London
Dean Edwards was shot in the back of the head in Betts Park, Penge, on 12 July 2020.
A 26-year-old man was tried for his murder but acquitted. The man had denied any involvement in the murder.
Part of the evidence against the man had been CCTV footage of a man walking near Betts Park around the time of the murder. The man tried also denied that the man in the CCTV footage had been him. He said that he didn't know Dean Edwards and had not been to Betts Park that night, although he said he might have been out with friends that night in a car.
A cigarette butt with the man's DNA was also found in the area in a residential street near Betts Park, but the man said he didn't know how it got there. He said that he did smoke cigarettes, but not every day.
It was thought that Dean Edwards had been shot in a case of mistaken identity. He had earlier been to a pub and had been walking alone towards Anerley Station at the time.
He had been shot with a self-loading pistol in the early hours of 12 July 2020. A 9mm casing was found near his body off the path whilst a 9mm bullet was extracted from his head during the post mortem.
The prosecution at the trial said, 'The shooting involved the deliberate, targeted discharge of a firearm at an unarmed man from behind. It was effectively an execution killing'.
The prosecution also said, 'In all likelihood, the man who shot him, the gunman, must have been lying in wait somewhere inside Betts Park. From the evidence, it would appear that the gunman must have seen Dean Edwards and then approached him from behind before shooting him. He did so, apparently, without any warning'.
The man was tried at the Old Bailey on 20 May 2022.
It was noted that residents in the area had begun referring to Betts Park as 'Murder Park', due to the number of after-dark incidents in recent years. Another earlier murder was that of Michael Jonas who was stabbed there on 2 November 2017. His murder remained unsolved until 2023 when six people were convicted of his murder.
Dean Edwards had had four children.
