One
of Damilola Taylor’s killers is back in prison for a third time on Wednesday
after he was arrested again.
Ricky Preddie, 25, has been taken into
custody after police found a stolen motorbike at his bail hostel in Richmond,
Surrey.
Preddie was first jailed for eight years
in 2006 after he and his brother Danny stabbed 10-year-old Damilola in the neck
with a broken bottle as he walked home from the library in Peckham, south-east
London.
The schoolboy bled to death in 2000, in a
case that shocked Britain, and now his killer has been linked with an £800 red
Suzuki motorbike taken in a burglary, five months after he was last released.
Damilola’s father, Richard, 64, on
Wednesday expressed his fury at the depressing ‘prison merry-go-round’ linked
to his son’s death.
“He should now stay in prison. If he had
been jailed for life for killing my son in the first place, we wouldn’t have
this prison merry-go-round,” he told the Sun.
Mr. Taylor has said he and his brother
should be hanged, saying the last time Ricky was released in January 2012: “He
has not served enough time behind bars for what he did.
“He has not had the opportunity to
reflect on what he has done and it is obvious he will return to criminality.”
The killer appeared at a court in
Wimbledon in December dressed in a smart grey Barbour jacket, brown combat trousers
and sporting a large bandage over his left ear.
Preddie pleaded not guilty at an earlier
hearing of being in possession of a stolen red Suzuki motorbike worth £800
between October 31 and December 10 last year.
Defence counsel Rosemary Ollenson confirmed
there was no appeal for bail as Mr. Preddie was out on licence at the time of
the alleged offence.
Chair magistrate Mrs. Amanda Otway, said:
“Your trial date is February 6. You are going to be remanded in custody until
that date for the same reasons as last time.”
It appears that Preddie cannot stay away
from trouble as he continues to lurch between bail hostels and prison.
He was first freed in September 2010
after four years in jail – only half his sentence for Damilola’s manslaughter –
and was told he must stay away from his old area, and other places in south
London he used to visit with his gang.
But only six months later he was recalled
after returning to the Peckham estates he terrorised as a boy.
On January 25 last year, he was freed for
a second time but got in trouble again only 16 days after being released.
Preddie was spotted entering a South
London estate to meet up with fellow gang members, again breaching the terms of
his release.
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