The Case of Stephen Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence was murdered on the night of 22 April 1993, in Eltham, a south-eastern suburb of London. He was on his way home with a friend, Duwayne Brooks. Both Lawrence and Brooks were eighteen years old and both were black. Lawrence was at school studying for his A levels; Brooks was at college learning electronics. It was a Thursday. Lawrence had been at school; Brooks had a day off college. They met at the gates of Lawrence's school, hung around in Lewisham for a while and then went to Mottingham, where they spent the evening at the home of Lawrence's uncle, eating dinner and playing Super Nintendo. At 9.55 p.m. they left the Mottingham house and began their complicated bus journey home. Stephen's parents did not like him to be out late.

Lawrence lived in Plumstead. Mottingham and Plumstead are only three miles apart, but the journey involved three buses on different routes; this part of London has never been penetrated by the Underground, and most main roads run east to west. Lawrence and Brooks were travelling south to north, parallel to the line of the primary meridian which cuts through Greenwich, a couple of miles to the west. The first bus took them to Eltham High Street and a second to a well-known local interchange, Well Hall Roundabout. There they walked fifty yards to a bus stop in Well Hall Road from which they could take a third bus the mile or so over the hill to Plumstead. They reached the stop at 10.25 p.m.

Three other people waited there with them: a young French au pair girl and two white men, one in his thirties and the other in his late teens. According to the later statements of these three people, Lawrence and Brooks passed the time chatting about football, and one of them practised a few dance steps.

Fifteen minutes passed. No bus came. The boys got restless. If at the beginning of these fifteen minutes they had decided to walk the rest of the way, they would have been almost home by now. Plumstead was only a mile and a quarter away. Brooks suggested a different route home, on a bus which used another exit from the roundabout, but Lawrence was reluctant to move; the other route was less direct. Brooks then walked a few yards back towards the roundabout to see if a bus was coming. He spotted one in the distance, and also a group of young white men on the far side of the roundabout moving their way. There were half a dozen of them. Brooks turned and moved towards Lawrence, calling: 'Can you see the bus?'

Lawrence didn't reply; perhaps he hadn't heard the question. Brooks called again: 'Can you see it?'

The time was 10.40 p.m.

The white boys were by now just across the road and within earshot. One called out: 'What, what, nigger?'

Then the white group started to run across the road towards Lawrence and Brooks. Brooks ran from them, yelling to Lawrence to run too. But Lawrence didn't, perhaps because he hadn't quite understood what Brooks was warning him of. The white group surrounded him, punching and kicking him and pulling him to the ground. One of the white boys chased Brooks briefly and then turned back to join in the beating of Lawrence.

It was over in a few seconds. The white boys ran off down a residential side street, Dickson Road. Lawrence got to his feet and ran in the other direction, across Well Hall Road. His friend rejoined him. 'Duwayne,' said Lawrence. 'Just run,' said Brooks.

They covered about a hundred yards. Brooks was ahead when he heard Lawrence call again.

'Look at me, tell me what's wrong.'

Brooks turned and saw blood pumping through Lawrence's jacket.

'Just keep running,' he said.

'I can't, I can't,' Lawrence said. Then he collapsed.

Brooks saw a phone box, ran to it, and dialled 999, asking for an ambulance. The operator seemed uncertain of the phone box's location. Brooks wasn't sure that he had been understood. He left the phone off the hook and ran out into the traffic on Well Hall Road, trying to flag down passing cars; none stopped. He asked a couple of pedestrians for help; they walked on. He tried the telephone again, and again there was confusion–panicky incoherence at one end, perhaps, and incomprehension at the other.

A car stopped; the driver was an off-duty policeman. Lawrence had lost consciousness by now and Brooks was agitated and distressed. He told the policeman that he'd called for an ambulance but that the woman at the other end hadn't listened to him. The policeman went to the phone and came back to say that an ambulance was on its way. A couple came out of a church nearby. The woman knelt beside Lawrence and realized she could do nothing but comfort him and pray. She thought he seemed peaceful. Two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman, arrived next. Brooks asked: 'Where's the fucking ambulance? I didn't call the police.' He urged the policeman to take Stephen to hospital by car. According to Brooks: 'He said he couldn't. He said he was going to handcuff me because I was getting hysterical.'

An ambulance arrived at 10.54 p.m., but Lawrence was no longer breathing and his heart had stopped beating. He was taken to Brook Hospital, a mile away. At 11.17 p.m. he was certified dead.

The autopsy showed that he had been stabbed twice with a large knife, once in the shoulder and once close to the collarbone. The blows were probably struck while he was still standing and entered the body in a downward direction, severing vital arteries and veins. Lawrence bled to death from these blows, but the attack had been so quick and so confusing that the three people at the bus stop, watching from only twenty-five yards away, thought they had witnessed a scuffle rather than a stabbing. None of them had seen a weapon; they saw only that Stephen had been pulled to the ground and kicked. When he got to his feet and ran, it looked as though he was not badly hurt. All three boarded the bus when it came along, but one of them, the white teenager, Joe Shepherd, recognized Lawrence as a boy from his neighbourhood. When he got home, he told his father. Father and son then went to tell Stephen's parents, Neville and Doreen Lawrence, that they thought Stephen might have been badly beaten. In search of their son, the Lawrences drove first to the bus stop and then to the hospital, where, after a short wait, they were told that he had died.

These are the principal events in the murder of Stephen Lawrence, so far as they are known. There is little about them to suggest that he would become the most famous black victim of murder in British history.