Permanent memorial to ‘gentle giant' Richard Everitt unveiled in Somers Town after 30 years
Event doubles as reunion after family's long battle for recognition
Friday, 23rd August 2024 — By Tom Foot
Close family watch-on as Father Paschal blesses the memorial plaque [All photos Simon Lamrock]
THE Somers Town faithful turned out in force on Saturday for the unveiling of a permanent memorial to a “gentle giant” teenager who was stabbed to death 30 years ago.
The bench and plaque next to Purchese Street Open Space, Somers Town, follows a long battle for recognition by the family of Richard Everitt.
The 15-year-old, who went to William Ellis and South Camden Community School, was knifed in the back close to his home in Hampden Close in August 1994.
The judge sentencing Richard’s killers at the time ruled the attack had been unprovoked and racially motivated.
Richard’s sister, Lucy, told the New Journal that the family still thought about him every day and his mother Mandy told how she still kept an unopened can of Coke he had in his tracksuit pocket that night next to his ashes.
Mandy Everitt
There was a reunion of family and friends who came together in the shadow of the huge tower block of private housing – part of a regeneration that many feel has failed to provide for the community.
It was a bitter-sweet get-together as Richard’s father, Norman, had died from cancer two years earlier.
Mandy said: “It’s lovely that it is here, but it should have been done while Norman was still alive. It was something he really wanted.
‘We had been fighting for it for all this time, and then he dies. Thirty years we have been fobbed off by the council over this.”
She recalled how the family had to be moved out of London in the weeks after the murder by police, adding: “There were death threats and we were told people wanted to firebomb the house.
“They took us away at 12 o’clock at night. We hadn’t done nothing. It was awful.”
Recalling her son, she said: “He was funny. He used to help the old people. Everyone brought their bikes to him to fix.
“He was so big, but he would never hit anyone. I sometimes wish he had fought back, because he could have done.
“That night – he didn’t have a bruise on him, just a stab wound in his back.”
Richard Everitt
Richard was murdered on his way home from playing a game of football with friends when he was confronted by around 20 older boys and stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife as he tried to run to safety.
The attack on Richard and his friends was said to be in revenge for a jewellery mugging by another Somers Town boy a day before – even though Richard had nothing to do with that incident.
A court case never established who delivered the fatal blow, although Badrul Miah was jailed for conspiring to murder.
Other suspects left the country, police said at the time.
Richard’s murder led to tensions between youths in Regent’s Park and Somers Town estates for several years.
A campaign was launched by the family that was successful in forcing improvements at some schools and on estates.
The plaque on the memorial bench
Lucy said: “The night Richard was murdered, one of the friends who was with him ran round to us and knocked on the door – it was a Saturday night.
“They said he’d been stabbed. My dad ran round there, just around the corner from where we are now.
“It’s not like it is now, the bushes were so overgrown and he couldn’t see my brother on the floor – so he ran home and said, ‘Mandy I can’t find him’.
“Then they both ran back round and found him, because the blood had started to run down to the kerb.
“We had been hanging out earlier in the day. We’d been up to the market with mum and dad and then down to the pub to play pool.”
She added: “He was an emotional kid, gentle, a mummy’s boy really. It’s just sad that he never got to do anything.
“Having my own daughters, the youngest is 16, to think they have all their lives ahead of them.
“This week, I took them around the area, showing them where we used to hang out in Camden.
“There was no controversiality, everyone got on. There was no problems about what culture and what colour people were.
“It was beautiful. My kids say to me, ‘Where does racism come from?’
“I don’t know. We didn’t feel that way.
“They ask me whether we felt safe in the streets, but we just did. But the world has changed.”
Richard’s close friend John Bass
The unveiling of the memorial has been a long time coming for the family who have had to put up with many delays and setbacks.
It is replacing a bench and plaque that was neglected and later damaged by the council after it was moved into storage during a regeneration project and the building of a tower block.
But the family said on Saturday that they had been disappointed by the state of the new garden that the memorial has been set up in.
Lucy said: “The day before they said we were going to find it beautiful. But there was no beauty here.
“They have spent so much money on this place, and there was just a load of fern bushes – there was rubbish everywhere, cans of beer, vapes, junk basically. We had to pick it all up.”
Richard’s “Nanny Pegg” still lives close to the memorial but the rest of the family have had to leave the area, with Lucy living in Greece and Mandy up in Yorkshire. Richard’s brother Danny lives in south London.
There was a ripple of spontaneous applause from the crowd during a song, written by one of Richard’s friends, John Bass, that called out the killing as a “racist murder”.
No elected councillors attended the event, but two council security guards were monitoring proceedings from across the road.
St Mary’s vicar Father Paschal Worton said: “His family miss him every day. It’s a loss that will be felt always.
“Norman, like all the family, longed for a proper and fitting plaque. He will be rejoicing and cheering you all on from a better place today.
“Love is stronger than death.
“It’s never diminished, it goes on even when someone dies. It expands.
“One way to show our love is to remember, that is why it is so fantastic that everyone is here today and the bench and plaque are so important.
“To forget Richard is to do him a great injustice.”
He read the poem Death is Nothing at All and blessed the family, reading out their names: Amanda, Lucy, Daniel and departed Norman – granddaughters Shirley, Alexandra, Rosie, Frances, Madelaine, Milly, grandsons Liam, Kyle, Adam, Charlie, great-grandchildren Faith, Grace, Molly, Penelope, and Elijah.
“Quite a clan!” he said.
The memorial stone
A Camden Council spokesperson said: “We’ve been working with the Everitt family for some time to get Richard’s memorial reinstated.
“The memorial now includes a smart new plinth for Richard’s memorial stone, with newly planted roses and a fern garden which will fill out as they grow.
“Ahead of the private remembrance event at the weekend, we were in touch with Richard’s family and we brought in some additional flowers for them.
“This is a public space, and as well as keeping the area tidy ourselves, we hope residents will respect the space and we ask them not to litter.”
