Mum's life destroyed in minutes after son killed as she backs knife ban
Yemi Hughes’ life changed in just two-and-a half-minutes, when her son Andre Aderemi was murdered aged 19.
“I was married, I had a home, I had three sons, I was working full time as a Design and Technology teacher,” says Yemi, 44. “My youngest had been scouted for Chelsea, so it was all football all the time. Everyone would come to us for Christmas. We always had the boys’ friends around.
“Nothing is the same now. My husband and I separated after the murder. We had to move five times, and at one point we were homeless. We still owe the money for the funeral.”
But it is the effect on Yemi’s other sons, now 21 and 15, that has been most painful. Yemi says: “My youngest son... really shut down and stopped speaking after the murder. One of the boys convicted had been Andre’s friend and was often round our house. So now my boys struggle with friendships.
Andre Aderemi was murdered in 2016 (Go Fund Me)“They don’t like letting people know where we live. My older son learned to drive as soon as he could to avoid public transport.” Andre, a talented footballer and aspiring sports physiotherapist who dreamed of becoming a Crystal Palace coach, was murdered in 2016.
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Making sure no other parent ever has to endure what her family has been through is the reason Yemi found herself standing in Parliament Square this week with the actor Idris Elba, CEO of knife crime charity The Ben Kinsella Trust Patrick Green and Bishop Mark Nicholson.
Yemi held the clothes Andre was wearing the night he was murdered. Piles of clothes were left in 247 neatly folded bundles across the Westminster landmark on Monday morning, one for each knife crime victim last year, so that MPs would have to walk past them.
Yemi helped advise Elba on his Don’t Stop Your Future campaign, which launched in the Daily Mirror that day. The actor and rapper is calling for the Government to ban so-called “zombie” and other attack knives, and to fund youth services.
Andre Aderemi and his mum Yemi Hughes“It does feel like a breakthrough, to be listened to,” Yemi says of the campaign. “Bereaved families are being given a platform now because of the status Idris has as an actor. He met us beforehand to ask for the aims he should be pushing for.
“You can feel abused, as if you’re being paraded as a bereaved person – but Idris didn’t behave like that.” In 2017 four young men were convicted of killing Andre. It intensified the family’s pain that Yemi had taught three of them – including Femi Cela, known as Fabio – at secondary school.
As a teacher, Yemi recognised signs that Cela was troubled, so when Andre became friends with him, she was worried. But Andre tried to reassure her, she recalls, explaining: “If his friends needed something he
would jump and go and help them. I used to tell him, follow your own heart and your own head.”
Some reporting of the case suggested gang rivalry but Yemi says: “Andre wasn’t in a gang. My son had no criminal record. He had a group of friends he’d known since primary school. Nothing of what happened, happened because of gangs. It happened because Andre was defending a girl who lived near to us.”
CEO of The Ben Kinsella Trust Patrick Green, Idris Elba, Yemi Hughes and Bishop Mark Nicholson (Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty I)Violent reprisals began after Andre became worried the girl was suffering domestic violence at the hands of his former friend Cela, her boyfriend. The young men argued.
“On July 16, 2016, Andre and his friend were parked outside the shop on the estate when a car pulled up with headlights blinding them,” Yemi remembers, adding: “His friend got out and a shot gun was let off. Then two nights later, we were in bed asleep when we heard glass smashing. All the windows downstairs and the car windows were broken. The boys were petrified – my youngest son was only eight.
“Then came a drive-by shooting where they shot our front door. The boys knew who it was – this was all reported to the police. They gave us a panic alarm, but I knew we had to move. I rented a place in Kent from the end of July. Two weeks later, on August 16, we came back to visit my sister and that is when it happened. That night, Andre died.”
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Andre was attacked with a metal pole, stabbed and beaten in an attack that lasted two-and-a-half-minutes. He died in hospital. Cela and Jamell Longergan were convicted of manslaughter; Ali Zahawy and Rodney Mukasa of murder.
Yemi said: “Young people are watching all sorts of violence online, that’s normal to them. They only need to Google a weapon once and the algorithm suggests it again and again. They don’t use any ID to buy it. It just gets posted to their house.
“In the trial it came out that one of the boys had been stopped with two samurai swords in the back of the car. But he said he bought them for his mum to go on the wall of the front room and was allowed to keep them.
“They were also caught with a shotgun but it was only half of it. I was told that if you transport it in two halves, it’s not illegal.”
Yemi wrote a book about her son’s murder, titled Senseless, and campaigned against knife crime. She had thought those days were behind her now but says: “I don’t want to be doing this but this campaign with Idris is me coming out of retirement for one last fight.”
- benkinsella.org.uk/idris-elbas-dont-stop-your-future-campaign/
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