A teenage girl who acted as a "honeytrap" in the murder of a smitten 16-year-old has been locked up for a minimum of 10 years.

Samantha Joseph, 17, led Shakilus Townsend into an ambush in a quiet cul de sac where he was beaten by a love rival and his gang with baseball bats and stabbed six times.

The teenager bled to death after the "relentless and merciless attack" by a masked and hooded gang in Thornton Heath, south London, in July last year.

Joseph, who was 15 at the time, laughed as the gang caught up with him, walking away as they began their assault.

Her older boyfriend, Danny McLean, plunged a knife into Shakilus's chest, raking it across his liver before twisting the blade. As he lay bleeding to death, Shakilus, from Deptford, south-east London, called out for his mother and cried: "I don't want to die."

Joseph, and McLean, 18, from Thornton Heath, were found guilty of murder alongside five other youths in July. They were all given life terms today as Shakilus's mother, Nicola Dyer, wept at the back of the court.

Joseph, from Brockley, south London, was ordered detained for a minimum of 10 years. McLean is to serve a minimum of 15 years.

The judge, Richard Hawkins, told the gang: "You left him to die a lonely death, crying for his mother."

Nicola Dyer, 34, said in a statement read to the court by a lawyer: "The reality that these young people with no souls had such a disregard for life that they deliberately conspired to use manipulation to cause nothing short of destruction is absolutely soul-destroying for me.


"They should never again be allowed to destroy another family. I may forgive them one day, but not today."

Andre Thompson, 17, from Norwood, south-east London, was given a minimum of 14 years.

Sentences of at least 12 years were given to former public schoolboy and London Irish rugby player Andre Johnson-Haynes, 18, from Croydon, south London; brothers Tyrell Ellis, 19, and Don-Carlos Ellis, 18, of Thornton Heath; and Michael Akinfenwa, 18, from Norwood.

Hawkins said Joseph had "come under the malign influence" of McLean.

As the male defendants were led from the court they made defiant noises that were echoed by their supporters in the public gallery.


The court heard that Shakilus had been besotted with Joseph and told his mother he wanted to marry her, but she told friends she was just using him and treated him like "shit".

While Joseph was happy for him to shower her with gifts, she was still obsessed with McLean, who had dumped her when he found out about her relationship with Shakilus. She was prepared to do anything to get McLean back and he told her: "If you still love me, will you set up Shak?" She agreed.

CCTV footage from the day of the murder showed Joseph wearing a see-through floral dress as she met Shakilus and took a bus with him.

He thought they were on their way to meet her cousin but in fact she was leading him into the ambush while secretly keeping in touch with McLean by mobile phone.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said: "She agreed to set up the hapless Shakilus Townsend in a honeytrap with a lethal and tragic twist.

"She was more than equal to the task. She played her part to perfection, duping Shakilus who could see no wrong in her, the others in hot pursuit of him."

After the murder, Joseph was seen walking off with McLean, carrying his hoodie and a cream-coloured handbag stained with his blood from an injury sustained during the murder.

She later tried to "rub out" all traces of her relationship with Shakilus, deleting his online Bebo account and telling friends to erase his number from their phones.

Detective Inspector Barney Ratcliffe said: "Knife crime will only end up in this sort of tragedy when a young lad is killed because he loves a girl – the wrong girl in this case."

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/sep/04/shakilus-townsend-honeytrap-murder-sentence