22
NEWS
31-year-old cardiology nurse, shouted at
her two children to get away from the
window. Then she ran outside and found
Keon. “He was sitting slumped on a step
outside a house,” she said. “His mother
Charmaine was there, saying his name
over and over.
“‘Keon. Keon. He’s only 15,’ she was
saying.” With Charmaine’s help, Carley
took Keon down from the step and
started to undress him to look for
wounds. “He had a big dark jacket on
with lots of layers underneath.”
Carley had never seen a bullet wound
but when she saw the injury to his stom-
ach, she said, “I knew he was in a bad
way. I could see it in his eyes. He had that
blank stare.”
Keon was taken to hospital and
declared dead at 5.40pm. A post-mortem
examination showed he had suffered
eight sharp force injuries. But stabbings
alone would not have been sufficient to
kill him. The gunshot had punctured a
major artery, resulting in internal bleed-
ing, loss of consciousness, coma and
death.
Police did not recover the gun, but a
former Birmingham gang member said it
may have been bought on the dark web.
“We had guns delivered from eastern
Europe,” he said. “We bought them
online. Dark web shit. We hid them in
people’s houses, or derelict buildings.
Often one of the new recruits, or young
’uns, would be made to keep hold of it.
“Some of them were old wartime guns.
They were proper unreliable. But we had
some proper automatics too. We used
whatever we could get our hands on.
Guns. Knives. Anything.”Violence has worsened in lockdown
Even before Keon’s murder, senior offi-
cers in West Midlands police had become
concerned about the number of teenag-
ers being caught up in the escalation in
violence in inner-city Birmingham.
Although gang conflict in the city is not
new, experts say that the pandemic has
made matters significantly worse.
In Handsworth, crime had increased
by 87 per cent in the 12 months before his
death, police figures show.
According to Simon Foster, the West
Midlands police and crime commis-
sioner, rising school exclusions and cuts
to youth services and policing have left
“vulnerable young people at increased
risk of becoming victims of crime”.
The Rev Neville Popo, who runs the
Wesleyan Holiness Church in Hand-
sworth, said: “There’s been nothing for
these youngsters to do.” The church is
attended by Keon’s family, and Popo had
known Keon since he was a baby. “Years
ago, there was a youth club in every
town,” he said. “Now, there’s nothing
going on.”
During lockdown, enforced school clo-
sures provided gangs in Birmingham
with more opportunities to recruit new
members, community leaders say.
Keon is not thought to have been a
member of a gang. But in his area, locals
say the gangs are so prolific that it would
have been near-impossible for a 15-year-
old boy to grow up without knowing any-
one who was a member of the local
Armed Response (AR) gang, which is an
arch rival of the Get Money Gang (GMG).
Keon would have known figures in AR
because he grew up with them, and even
this could have made him a target for
GMG, they say.
A campaigner, Michelle Helsby, said
the proliferation of gangs in the area wasgetting worse. “You don’t even have to be
in a gang,” she said. “If you’re from these
areas — like Handsworth — you can get
killed. My son has lost two friends this
year, both under 15. Keon was the first.”School exclusion spelt trouble
Keon was described as bright and happy.
Friends and family remember a “loving
child with a jolly spirit” — a natural
“joker” who enjoyed computer games,
dancing, music, playing football and
hanging out with friends. He would often
walk around the house singing and
exploding into a booming laugh.
But he struggled at school, where his
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) had, at times, made him disrupt-
ive. Between December 2018 and January
2020, Keon attended the Jewellery Quar-
ter Academy in Hockley, close to his
home. But by the time of his death, he
had been sent to a pupil referral unit
called the City of Birmingham School.
Statistically, Keon’s life chances were
slashed the moment he was excluded
from mainstream school.
Only 4 per cent of such children —
mainly boys from disadvantaged ethnic
minority backgrounds with special edu-
cational needs — pass English and maths
at GCSE, compared with 64 per cent in
mainstream schools.
“Keon struggled with ADHD,” said a
family friend. “He didn’t skip school or
anything, his attendance was good. [But]
he could occasionally be disruptive.”
Jewellery Quarter Academy would not
comment on whether Keon had been
excluded. But a 2018 Ofsted report
marked the school down as “requires
improvement”, with its record on exclu-
sions cited as a cause for concern. Inspec-
tors noted “pupils’ behaviour is not yet
good” and that the school’s leaders “do
not focus enough on improving the
achievement of disadvantaged pupils or
securing their pastoral care and mental
wellbeing”.
They also said the school was failing to
properly analyse whether it was exclud-
ing a disproportionate number of pupils
from disadvantaged backgrounds, orwith special educational needs, like
Keon’s. Paul, aged 19, a family friend,
claimed Keon had been excluded from
the academy for “fighting”.
“Schools don’t help students enough,”
said Paul. “And I think it’s just gotten
worse over the years — there is no gui-
dance or groups teaching you how to get
away from that sort of life.
“The biggest wrong crowd [Keon] fell
in with was from that school [the Jewel-
lery Quarter Academy].”
A spokesman for the academy said that
Keon had been a pupil there “for just over
a year”, adding that “like everyone across
the community, we were shocked and
deeply saddened by Keon’s tragic death”.He wanted a way out of Birmingham
During the lockdown, Paul remembers
seeing Keon hanging out with friends late
at night. “He would cling onto the older
boys,” he said. “I think it was because he
never had an older brother.”
He thought Keon — who had no contact
with his father — was searching for a
paternal influence. Paul remembers how
Keon would ask him how he could afford
a car, and how he had managed to get to
university. “Every night, I’d see him sit-
ting out on the doorstep with his friends.
I’d drive home and see him sitting on his
doorstep. I didn’t want to see it. I’d tell
him, ‘Come and sit in my car.’
“We’d talk and he’d ask — ‘How are you
affording these things?’
“I’d say, ‘I’m working, I’m going to col-
lege, I’m saving, I’m going to uni.”
Paul said it was clear that Keon wanted
a way out. “He wanted to experience life
outside of Birmingham, college, uni, all
of it. He stood out because he didn’t act
like all his friends. He wanted to go some-
where.”Friendships made him a target
The area in which Keon grew up is a bat-
tleground between the AR gang, based in
Handsworth, and GMG, based in nearby
Newtown, Lozells and Aston.
His killers are thought to have been
part of GMG’s network, and the 14-year-
old who fired the gun that killed Keonknew him socially. Gangland sources
claim Keon’s killers “would have known
that Keon hung out with” teenagers asso-
ciated with AR, and that this was enough
for him to have become their target.
“Keon just hung around with us,” said
one former member of the gang who
agreed to an anonymous interview. “He
wasn’t in AR. He didn’t sell drugs or do
crime. Nothing like that. But being
friends with AR is enough to be a target
for the other gangs in Birmingham.”
The former AR gangster claimed to
have left the group last year to start a new
life away from Handsworth.
Keon, too, had wanted to escape the
gang culture in the area where he lived,
according to his friend Paul. “I think he
could see the gang culture around him
and was worried about being drawn into
it too deeply.”
According to Paul, things got worse for
Keon when he began smoking cannabis
towards the end of last year. “He started
smoking when that lockdown hit, sitting
on his doorstep more, every night with-
out fail,” he said.
“It was as if he was depressed. He still
talked to me about wanting to go some-
where, but he was less motivated, less
interested in a lot of things.”
The night before Keon died, Paul chat-
ted to him outside his house, telling him
to stop buying cannabis and start saving.
On the afternoon of the attack, Paul
knocked on the door, but Keon didn’t
answer. Hours later, he died.
“I never got to speak to him that morn-
ing. It was a huge waste of life,” Paul said.
“Keon had a lot to him. He could have had
so much. He was a lovely, lovely boy.”Fake plates and a taxi ride to murder
Keon’s murder by a group of young boys
and teenagers was carefully planned. The
group had amassed an armoury of weap-
ons, and their vehicle — stolen earlier that
month — had been fitted with a false
plate. “Gang members call this a ‘ride
out’”, the former gang member said.
“You get a stolen car with fake plates to do
a drug deal, or maybe to do a hit on
another gang member as revenge forThere was
a youth
club. Now
there’s
nothing
22
INVESTIGATION
Police at the
scene in
Birmingham after
Keon’s murder in
JanuaryThe gun-wielding murder
The conviction of four teenagers who
roamed the streets for a victim has exposed
how, in a wave of violence hidden from the
headlines, youngsters are killing each other
1
January 21: Keon is hanging out with a friend outside his
house in Linwood Road when a stolen Ford S-Max pulls
up at 3.37pm. A group of youths, aged between 14 and
17, wearing masks and hoods, jump out.2
The 14-year-old fires a revolver at Keon and misses.
Keon runs up the road, trips and falls. The group
surround him. The 14-year-old shoots Keon in the
stomach. The rest of the boys use hunting knives to
hack at his body. He is stabbed eight times.3
Keon’s attackers escape in the Ford, as neighbours run
from their homes to help. Charmaine, Keon’s mother, holds
him as he is dying, while an off-duty nurse provides first
aid. An ambulance takes Keon to hospital. He dies two
hours later.ADAM HUGHES/SWN; WM/SWNS‘He’s only
15, ’ Keon’s
mother
was heard
crying
Keon’s mother
CharmaineDAVID COLLINS AND
MEGAN AGNEW
L
ike many of the teenagers in his
area during last January’s lock-
down, Keon Lincoln had taken to
spending his afternoons chatting
to friends on the front wall of his
house. His school in inner-city
Birmingham had been closed for
two and a half weeks amid soar-
ing infection rates, and Keon and his
friends were increasingly bored.
One afternoon a white Ford S-Max
screeched to a halt outside Keon’s house.
Five boys, aged between 14 and 17, got
out. They wore masks and hoods. The
14-year-old had a loaded revolver and the
others, hunting knives.
Keon tried to run, heading up the tree-
lined pavement, away from his house.
The first shot missed but he fell and was
surrounded. He was shot in the stomach
by the 14-year-old and the other boys
began hacking at him, their blades pierc-
ing his black puffer jacket. Keon was
stabbed eight times in 30 seconds before
the gang fled in the car.
Keon’s mother found him a few doors
up, slumped in a neighbour’s front yard.
She started to call for help, screaming his
name. “He’s only 15,” she was heard cry-
ing. Keon was taken to Birmingham Chil-
dren’s Hospital where he died two hours
later with internal bleeding.
Keon was one of four teenagers mur-
dered in a five-month period in Birming-
ham this year. All lived within a few miles
of each other. The killings put West Mid-
lands police under pressure to stem a tide
of gang violence. Yet it is one that has
barely touched the national headlines.
As Keon’s killers are sentenced tomor-
row, his family are reeling from their loss.
The full story of his life and death — which
can be told for the first time after four of
his killers were brought to justice this
month, along with a fifth boy who sup-
plied weapons for the attack — raises
questions for police, schools and com-
munity leaders in Birmingham.
It paints a picture of a decades-long
failure to break the cycle of gang vio-
lence, the impact of school exclusions on
children’s lives, and the extraordinary
availability of weapons online, which
allowed one of the attackers to buy 14
large knives from an online survivalist
shop over the three months before the
attack on Keon.
“We are all very upset, even now,” said
Fay Lawson, Keon’s grandmother. “He
was a lovely, lovely, successful boy. He
loved life. It’s just so sad. He was so
young. I haven’t been there [Birmingham
crown court]. I can’t face it.
“Even now, his sisters can’t bring
themselves to talk about Keon. His twin
sister and his older sister can’t speak
about him. I wouldn’t wish that on my
worst enemy.”He was in a bad way. I could see it
At 3.37pm on January 21, the quiet of Lin-
wood Road in Handsworth, where Keon
lived with his family, was shattered by the
sound of two gunshots.
Several neighbours ran to their win-
dows. One saw a youth with a large
machete. A second saw a teenager hold-
ing a long leather knife sheath. Carley, a