Tell me motive for your attack, mother of slaughtered teenager pleads with killer

The mother of a teenager stabbed to death outside a primary school has called on his killer to break his four-year silence on the reason for the attack.

Champion Ganda was just 17 when he was stabbed 11 times in the head, chest, arms and legs by drug dealer Amani Lynch in a street fight near Sandringham Primary School in Forest Gate in May 2013.

The teenager from Harold Hill, a talented rapper under the name Chrome and a former Arsenal youth trainee, was fatally wounded and collapsed in the street.

Lynch was sentenced to 14 years in youth detention on Friday after being found guilty of manslaughter but cleared of murder.

Champion’s mother Peguy Kato-Sweye spoke of the devastation her family has suffered and asked Lynch to explain what he did.

“I have so many unanswered questions as to why this boy took my son from me, including what gave you the right to kill Champion the way you did.

“What issues towards Champion were so big that it was worth taking away his life and taking away a loving son, brother, and grandson?” she said in a victim impact statement.

Passing sentence at the Old Bailey, Judge Wendy Joseph QC said Lynch had “shown an utter lack of understanding of what he had done”.

She also criticised his behaviour during the trial, when he was seen grinning in the dock and joking around just yards away from Champion’s grieving relatives.

Prosecutor Simon Denison QC said Lynch was a “hardened” gang member who has 15 previous convictions, including seven drug crimes, two assaults, and he was caught with a knife in 2013.

He committed a further offence of drug dealing while on bail.

Lynch, of Canning Town, was also found guilty of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm on Champion’s friend Shaquille Davis.