Old Bailey told Sharmaarke Hassan was victim of 'revenge attack' but may not have been intended gun target
Monday April 26, 2010
By DAVID ST GEORGE at THE OLD BAILEY
A TEENAGER was shot “for revenge” at the same spot where his friends had beaten up a schoolboy hours earlier, a jury heard today.
Two men recruited by the schoolboy waited in ambush at Camden Lock before firing pistol shots at a group of youngsters.
Sharmaarke 'Sharkey' Hassan, 17, was hit in the back of the head and suffered fatal injuries.
But he may not have been the intended target, said prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC, at the Old Bailey.
“This murder was as casual as it was callous. The killers could not have cared less which of the victim's group was shot. Anyone of them would do,” added the QC.
Sharkey, from Agar Grove, Camden Town, whose life support machine was switched off in hospital four days after the shooting in May 2008, had been with a group who had “humiliated” and beaten up a local 15 year-old.
He was seeking revenge rather than to do his own “dirty work” he recruited cousins Didi Parkes, 24, of Willesden Lane, and Chen Shire, 21, of Carroll Close, Kentish Town.
The pair, together with the schoolboy, deny murder. Their trial is expected to last five weeks.