JESSIE WRIGHT: Grieving friends and family take to the streets

Monday March 29, 2010

By ROISIN GADELRAB

THERE was no police escort, no road closures and no official starting time.
But friends and family of teenager Jessie Wright gathered in Outram Place, King's Cross, yesterday, regardless, to march in memory of the 16-year-old, who was found dead close by just three weeks ago.
Jessie's younger sister Molly was among the gathering.

The march was delayed slightly by some confusion over the clocks going forward, but they did not mind waiting. The young girls and boys, who had put so much effort into remembering their friend, signed their names and tributes on a sheet, dressed in flowers and bright colours and led the way along Caledonian Road past Jessie's favourite hangouts.

She was a former pupil at Maria Fidelis School in Somers Town and well known on both sides of the Camden and Islington borough boundaries in King's Cross. The unofficial march stopped traffic as they led a group of up to 100 teenagers, mothers with prams, neighbours and one pensioner in a
wheelchair through the Delhi Outram Estate, past Bemerton and up towards Pentonville Prison.

Along the way they stopped outside the home where Jessie lived with her grandmother, Dallas cafe, where she loved to enjoy a bacon sandwich, and her favourite kebab shop. They stopped to collect money for a memorial which they hope to put up somewhere near where Jessie lived.