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On 16 November 2007, I heard the news that seventeen-year-old Etem Celebi had been shot and killed on the Smalley Close Estate in Stoke Newington. He was a student at nearby Stoke Newington School.
This news was particularly poignant for me because I had worked therapeutically with boys in distress and trouble at Stoke Newington School, Etem's school. We need to keep in mind the real human beings involved and the immediate and pressing nature of these tragedies - these are issues we have to do something about, right now.
Etem's murder marked the twenty-third killing of a teenager in London in 2007. In 2008, by July, there have been twenty-one killings by knife crime alone. Etem Celebi was shot by other teenagers thought to be gang members from Stamford Hill. They thought someone from the Smalley Close estate had stabbed their friend, and had come down to Stoke Newington looking for retaliation. They came upon Etem and his friends, sitting talking, and asked, ‘Are you from this estate?’ When Etem said yes, the boys started firing - in all they fired nine shots, and didn't care whom they hit. Etem tried to run, and hid crouching behind a nearby car, but he was shot in the lower back and died hours later. A seventeen-year-old boy has now been arrested for his killing, as well as three other teenagers.
The press coverage of Etem's death was very focused around the issue of whether Etem himself was a gang member. There have been reports that he was involved in drug dealing and the sale of arms. The subtext of this is the question: was Etem an ‘innocent’ victim? One newspaper report read, ‘We should all be concerned about this killing, because these acts of violence are starting to involve the rest of us, who have no involvement in gang warfare’.