Mum who tried to help her son get away with murder by telling 'deliberate lies' is locked up

A mum who told ‘deliberate lies’ to try and help her son get away with murder has been jailed. Maria Dambrosio, 49, has followed her eldest son Francesco Raji in being sent to prison.

Dambrosio lied to police in a statement she made to officers in the aftermath of the murder of John Soyoye. John was just 16 when he was stabbed to death in Moston, following a large-scale fight between ‘two rival gangs’, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Raji was one of seven young men who were later convicted of murder. Dambrosio was prosecuted after trying to give false alibis to her son and Christopher Semedo, a family friend who was another of the seven to be convicted of murder.

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She went to trial but changed her plea on the third day of the case. Now she has been jailed for eight months after admitting perverting the course of justice.

Prosecutors told how John was stabbed on November 5, 2020. The court has previously heard it followed a clash between a Rochdale and Oldham-based gang known as the Pall Mall Gang (PMD) or Representing the Danger (RTD), and a rival gang known as the ‘M40’ or the ‘Laners’ who were based in Moston and John was said to have been linked to.

Raji and Semedo were both living with Dambrosio in Oldham at the time. The pair were both arrested on suspicion of murder on November 21, and Dambrosio gave a statement to police.

In the statement, she falsely claimed that the pair had both been at home at about 7pm on November 5, around the time of the murder, and said that nobody had left the property after that time. She denied that her son had been in Moston that night.

“These, Ms Dambrosio, were deliberate lies.” Judge Patrick Field KC told her. “I am told that the lies you told were instinctive, and told to protect your son.

“The fact is that they were told in the knowledge that he had been arrested for serious offences, and they were told to divert the attention of the police and to provide him and Christopher Semedo with false defences. There can be no doubt but that this was a particularly serious offence, the type of offence that others have described as striking at the heart of the criminal justice system.”

Defending, Clare Ashcroft said Dambrosio had been placed in an ‘invidious position’. “She was at the time of the view, a wholly erroneous view, I should add, that she was trying to protect her oldest son,” Ms Ashcroft added.

She said Dambrosio had attended every day of her son’s murder trial. “Her mothering instinct is strong,” she said.

Ms Ashcroft said she was ‘fearful’ of being jailed ‘not for herself’ but the impact it may have on her two sons. She said Dambrosio, of Mansfield Road, Oldham, is a single mother and that the father of her children has ‘disengaged’.

But Judge Field denied an appeal to suspend the prison sentence, instead sending her straight to prison where she will serve half of her eight month term. The judge told her: “The seriousness of this offence is such that it calls for a custodial sentence. The two young men who you sought to assist by your lies had committed murder.

“If your lies had been accepted they might not have been convicted of that offence. This was deliberate lying in the knowledge of a very serious underlying offence.”

John Soyoye’s killers were sentenced in January 2022 after being found guilty of murder:

• Brent Tchipenda, 22, of Wistaria Road, Gorton, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years.

• Christopher Semedo, 25, of Elm Road, Oldham, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 24 years.

• Francesco Raji, 22, of Elm Road, Oldham, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years.

• Octavio Antonio, 21, of Deepdale Court, Moston, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 20 years.

• Ismael Correia, 22, of Cavanagh Close, Ardwick, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 20-and-a-half years.

• Nelson Correia, 24, of Petworth Road, Oldham, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 23-and-a-half years.

• A 16-year-old boy was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years.